May 20, 2011 – It has to do with ‘natural killer’ cells – this is according to Japanese researchers who are beginning to understand the way in which asbestos causes mesothelioma. The 2011 study, Suppressive effect of asbestos on Cytotoxicity of human NK cells is providing us with clues on how asbestos can cause such an aggressive form of cancer, and hopefully, a way to cure it. Further studies are also being done on these NK (or ‘natural killer’) cells, which scientists are saying are suppressed by the presence of asbestos in the body.
NK cells are your body’s cancer defense system. They seek out cancerous cells and release cytoplasmic granules of proteins that trigger a cell’s natural ‘self-destruct mode’. In essence, once an NK cell meets a cancer cell, the cancer cell dies. There is a possibility that asbestos suppresses NK cell function, which causes mesothelioma.
“[Our findings] indicate that asbestos has the potential to suppress cytotoxicity of NK cells. In particular, it is noteworthy that both NK cells from malignant mesothelioma patients and those from a culture…derived from healthy volunteers with asbestos showed the same characteristic of decreased cytotoxicity with low expression of NKp46,” stated Nishimura Y, and the other researchers participating in the 2011 study.
More research is being conducted with these findings, but if they can find a way to block asbestos’s suppression of NK cells, we may be closer to finding a cure.
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