Today, new sources of inspiration are needed to better attack the Cancer
, advises Charlotte Corporeau, biochemist in the Physiology of invertebrates laboratory at Ifremer, Brest ((Finistere).
And the researcher opened a new path in 2014. While studying in the laboratory the resistance of the cupped oyster to a disease, she discovered that the shell activated a mechanism called the Warburg effect and controlled it.
However, this mechanism perfectly mimics the cell development phenomenon involved in the growth of cancers. This phenomenon is still irreversible in humans today. Because of it, cancer cells are sort of doped
, they proliferate and are more resistant to treatment.
Note that the oyster digs Crassostrea gigas mastering this process gave rise to a ray of hope, and a cascade of questions: how is the oyster so resistant? Is this mechanism naturally controlled in the oyster?
Shrimp research
To answer this question, the researcher benefited from the support of the ARC Foundation for cancer research, which funded the MOLLUSC project, a two-year research program that ended at the end of 2019. The fruit of this laboratory work and in the harbor of Brest on spat from Ifremer: With my colleagues, I managed to naturally reactivate the Warburg effect in the oyster, I have my protocol, I can do it
, welcomes Charlotte Corporeau.
Indeed, Ifremer researchers have demonstrated that the temperature controls the triggering of the Warburg effect in the hollow oyster thanks to their lab work but also to autonomous micro-sensors implanted in oysters in the harbor of Brest, allowing temperature measurement every minute and all year round. Charlotte Corporeau and her team also discovered the role played by proteins synthesized by the hollow oyster to activate and deactivate the Warburg effect according to its environment. Such proteins that one could imagine synthesizing and powdering to, perhaps, develop a new drug or bring to light a new model for cancer researchers, offering new ways of understanding the Warburg effect.
8,000 proteins of unknown functions
But there is still a long way to go. If we now know that proteins hold the solution, we still have to find out which one, since the oyster still has 8,000 proteins in its genome with unknown functions! No one knows what these proteins are for, some may be medicines for humans
, assumes the researcher, who is at the foot of a new mountain to climb: one that will allow her, thanks to analytical platforms partnered with Ifremer, to find the protein (s) responsible for the Warburg effect.
A new step which requires many fine biological analyzes, and therefore expensive. The first project will be that of seeking funding to move forward. Openings will also be made towards research on shrimp, while Japanese scientists have also observed a Warburg effect in these small crustaceans. But Charlotte Corporeau remains very attached to her oysters, and objectively the oyster will always be in front because we know its genome since 2012
, she says.
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