STORY BEHIND OBESITY BREAST CANCER ASSOCIATION

Hi I have an interesting story in my hand...I got it during my research works and I am really excited to share it.I can introduce you Two main characters which stand at the epicenter of this story-Obesity and Breast cancer.

A glimpse of Our Characters

          If you look around your society, it won’t be difficult to see my ‘character holding’ people there nowadays, I mean obese individuals. Obesity- a condition used to describe high levels of body fat. A sedentary life style, ‘eating too much and moving too little’ can leads to obese condition. Our WHO is telling us the people having Body Mass Index (BMI )greater than or equal to 30 are considered as obese. BMI can be easily calculated as weight/height2.Do you think obesity means Just a bulky body? Obesity is not only a simple matter of how much you look bulky.It is associated with a lot of metabolic disorders which can support or invite a long list of diseases like diabetes,fatty-liver,stomach ulcer,hypertension,arthritis,cardiovascular disease,Cancer etc. a silent killer…

        Most of us are really scared of even hearing the word Cancer...It, is not one disease but many diseases,We call them all “cancer” because they share a fundamental feature of abnormal growth of cells. In my opinion it is an evil which became hard to eradicate from our community. What to do? it doesn’t knock before it enters. Among all types of cancers Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed life-threatening cancer in women. In a simple way you can say breast cancer is a bulging mass in the breast which spreads insidiously under the skin.

They are coming to my story

          The most unforgettable incident of my life happened when I was doing my Post graduation…my cousin sister who was my best friend passed away because of Cancer at the age of 23.It happened a few months just after she had given birth to her little prince She couldn’t even lift her baby at leaest for once in her life.I still regret that I coudn’t at least spent my time with her during her last days.I cant even explain how could I overcome the worst situation in my life. The war against the monster cancer started for me from there and I decided to do something in this cancer biology area which should have to be good for cancer patients. So that’s how now am doing my research in breast cancer. After going several research articles, books and further discussions with my mentor, I decided to work on obesity associated breast cancer and like this they came to my story…

 ‘Home Sweet Home’

As all of us need a comfortable place to live from where we can easily get our necessary things the cancer cells also need an environment which could support its growth and we call that environment as tumor micro environment the ‘home sweet home’ of tumor. For breast cancer the native place is our mammary gland which comprises vast and heterogenous collection of cells including our energy storage cells adipocytes, macrophages, endothelial cells etc. We communicate with others in our society in order to make a better and healthy life, the same way the cells can also communicate with each other and incase of mammary gland the cells present there also have a great communication with each other and it is really important ant for the proper functioning and growth of the mammary gland. Any disruption of cell communications can both induce / promote a breast cancer. Do anyone likes to be sitting simply at our home for all the time.. No na. We all like to roam around, visit other places. The same happens with cancer cells.. they also want to travel.. want to talk with other cells.. want to visit other places. Angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels is essential for their visit as it is needed for adequate supply of oxygen, nutrients, removal of waste product and they provide the principal route by which tumor cells exit the primary tumor site and enter the circulation so that they can migrate to other organs and we call it metastasis.

Alarm for Obese Individuals

Do you know the obese breast cancer patients are showing greater mortality rate and poor therapeutic response than lean or normal patients. In order to understand why and how obesity becomes a villain like this we need to look at the changes happening during obesity.I n obesity adipocytes present in the mammary glands expands and become bulky cells called hypertrophic cells due to excess dietary energy intake. Hypertrophic cells are more stiff than normal cells and these dysfunctional adipose tissue are capable of secreting elevated quantities of metabolic substrates like glycerol alongside growth factors ,inflammatory factors and adipokines than the normal adipocytes. These factors are now recognized as important factors for cancer progression as they stimulate cell growth, angiogenesis and migration. They also releases increased amounts of fatty acids which could be accessed and utilized by neighboring Breast cancer cells as a source of energy for their growth. When Hypertrophic adipocytes feels it cant hold the extra dietary energy for any more they starts screaming “stop eating more fat”….What to do..who is gonna listen.. Finally adipocyte burst out and the released molecules brings macrophages to the scene and forms a crown gall like structure around the dead adipocytes. Now Macrophages secretes many pro inflammatory molecules named interleukins, cytokines etc., which can promote the tumor progression. So in obesity the microenvironment of the breast cancer becomes a fertile soil for tumorigenesis such that an obese breast cancer patient shows more aggressiveness than a lean patient.

‘Route Map’

          We have route maps while reaching our destination place. If you are going by a bus there will be a starting point then different bus stations and finally your destination point where you do your job right? A secretory molecule does its job by going to their destination by crossing different stations which we call as signaling molecules. After the first signaling molecule in the path receives a signal, it activates another molecule and so on and each stations are important for its journey. The whole path they travelled can be called the signaling pathway and is important to control the functions of cell .Also there will be an on/off switch for each pathway which could be in a ‘not working properly’ condition in cancer cell..

A pathway search - obesity associated breast cancer 

In human system the signaling mechanism is highly complex due to multiple pathways and nodal system. More than 1,00,000 proteins are involved in the signaling within the human cells, hence before starting my laboratory experiment to understand the mechanism of the obesity associated breast cancer I used TCGA portal for identifying the possible key pathways. TCGA is the cancer genome atlas having the genetic mutation, gene expression data or 33 different cancer, around 2500 breast cancer data is available. Using that data set we found few signaling pathways are altered in obesity associated breast cancer.        

Forced to love the evil cells while going against it…

Then I started to standardize my cell culture(cells are grown in a favorable artificial environment) of breast cancer cell lines MCF 7(they also have names) and pre-adipocyte cell lines named 3T3L1in my lab, it came to my culture also. oooh..contamination (some other uninvited guests are also growing with my cells..It was none other than Mr. bacteria). I realized it’s not easy to grow the cells invitro…they need all the care as in our body…I started again..This time I became friends with them and started talking to my cells. Works became an unmissable part of my life..I started loving them..started to care them. Yes..Now they are growing properly and giving me the correct results….In order to understand the effect of secrtory molecules by adipocytes on breast cancer cells, we created an in-vitro model to mimic the physiological environment of obesity related breast cancer by- growing the breast cancer cells and adipocyte cells together in a culture dish in which The two types of cells were separately cultured in different compartments interposed by a 0.4-μm-pore membran(ThinCertsTM) through which only soluble factors can diffuse. Now cancer cells are really very happy by seeing adipocytes nearby as if chottabheem (my kid’s favourite cartoon character) gets happy while seeing his favourite laddoos. Cancer cells are getting chance to interact with adipose secretory molecules.I could see the breast cancer cells proliferating vigourously now. Our results strongly support the innovative concept that adipocyte secretory molecules participate in breast cancer progression and that could be amplified in obese patients. We are evaluating the secretory molecules and further works are going on.. 

            I remember the words of Susan Sontag here. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship…in the kingdom of well and in the kingdom of sick..Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, atleast for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.

           So moral of the story is try to live in a healthy way and keep yourself fit in order to have always a smile on your face and to avoid holding the passport of kingdom sick…