Iron metabolism could be targeted to treat an aggressive form of cancer, study suggests

A research paper recently published in eLife identifies the function of a less-understood cell protein referred to as MEMO1. Dr. Oleg Dmitriev (Ph.

D.), a professor in the department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, and oncology professor Dr. Franco Vizeacoumar (Ph.

D.) in USask's College of Medicine were two of the authors of the study. As Dmitriev puts it, the team has discovered that MEMO1 binds iron and regulates iron flow in the cell.

And because MEMO1 appears at high levels in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells, Dmitriev said this could make iron regulation—and the MEMO1 protein—a potential target for cancer treatments. "The fundamental interest for us (in the protein) is the regulation of metals in the cell, and then the medical importance is its role in cancer," he said. "It looks like MEMO1 makes cancer cells more sensitive to disruptions of iron distribution, so the practical upshot is that we can use iron metabolism in the cell as a target to kill cancer cells.

" Researchers are still investigating the primary function of the MEMO1 protein in cells, but Dmitriev, Vizeacoumar and their colleagues have determined that it plays an important role in the regulation of iron metabolism in the cell—or in other words, the traffic of iron into and out of the cell and how it ends up being used. MEMO1 is one of many proteins involved in balancing iron in the cell. But through detailed genomic analysis, Dmitriev said they can identify which proteins work.