Anti-ageing protein linked to pancreatic cancer

Sirtuin, which is known for its link to ageing, has been associated with pancreatic cancer, raising the prospect of new treatments.

Sirtuin is something of a wonder protein, with it being linked to cellular longevity and ageing. Now researchers from Belgium and Australia have uncovered a link between sirtuin regulation and pancreatic cancer, potentially leading to new avenues for treatment.

They found that in some circumstances sirtuin-1 can be co-opted to aid cancer cells in developing and surviving.

Normally sirtuin-1 is inhibited in the pancreas by another protein in exocrine cells, called KIAA1967. However, during the development of pancreatic cancer, sirtuin-1 can be disconnected from its normal inhibiting protein and can begin to aid tumour cell development.

The researchers, led by Dr Elke Wauters and Dr Ilse Rooman from the Diabetes Research Centre at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium as well as a scientist at Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research, used a mouse model and cell cultures from human tumour samples to observe how sirtuin-1 influenced pancreatic cancer development.

They reason that inhibiting sirtuin-1 may help prevent the initiation of pancreatic cancer and may help slow or prevent the growth of existing tumours.

“While this is basic science, we believe our findings are important in progressing the understanding of how pancreatic tumours develop and may translate into new therapeutic strategies,” said Dr Rooman.

“Sirtuin-1 inhibitors are already in stage 2 clinical trials for another disease, meaning that they have been shown to be safe for people. That is excellent news as far as we are concerned, because it takes so much money and time to get a drug to that stage, and we believe this type of drug might be important in treating pancreatic cancer.

“The next stage of our work will be to further test our hypothesis in preclinical models.”

The paper was published last week in Cancer Research.