Suffocating tumours: can we stop cancer from growing in low oxygen environments?

Meet the scientist

Dr Kenneth is originally from Dundee in Scotland, and now lives on the Wirral with his wife, 2 kids, 1 dog, 2 cats and a bearded dragon! Outside the lab he enjoys long walks on the surrounding beaches and playing golf. The primary motivation for his research career was inspired by losing his mum, Nancy Kenneth, to small cell lung cancer when he was 20 years old. Going through that journey with his mum, dad and brothers at such a formative time in his life convinced him to pursue a career in cancer research. He has a passion to be part of a solution to help other families going through the same painful journey.

The science

Cells need oxygen to survive, which they receive through blood vessels. As lung cancers and mesothelioma grow, they outgrow the blood supply leaving parts of the tumour with lower oxygen supplies than surrounding tissue. If there is not enough oxygen for cells, they will die. This state of low oxygen is called hypoxia. In healthy cells, prolonged periods of hypoxia leads to cell death. Cancer cells, however, can adapt to survive in hypoxia and use this to stimulate the growth of new blood vessels in their local area. This allows the cancer to survive and grow further.

The team have found a potential key players in this process, a group of enzymes called deubiquitinases (or DUBs), which allow cancer cells to survive in hypoxic environments. They found that certain DUBs are ‘switched on’ in cancer cells during hypoxia to help them survive but are ‘switched off’ in surrounding healthy cells. They hope to ‘switch off’ DUBs in cancer cells which could ‘suffocate’ the cancer without affecting the surrounding healthy tissue.

The team are using a unique model to study hypoxia in tumours using fertilised hen’s eggs, as an alternative to mice. They will use new classes of drugs to ‘switch off’ DUBs and look at the effects on tumour growth and aggressiveness. Dr Kenneth explains: “The aim of this work is to develop new strategies to target hypoxic lung cancers and mesotheliomas which are generally more aggressive and harder to treat using existing therapies.”