Scientists at Northwestern University in the United States have found that terminally ill people with Huntington's chorea have an 80 percent reduction in cancer risk. It turned out that tumor cells are sensitive to a defective form of the huntingtin protein, which also causes the death of nerve cells. This was announced in a press release on MedicalXpress.
Chorea of Huntington is a genetic disorder of the nervous system caused by the multiplication of a CAG codon (triplet of nucleotides) in the HTT gene that codes for huntingtin. As a result, the protein has an excess of the amino acid glutamine. This leads to atrophy of the striatum - the part of the brain that controls motor reactions and conditioned reflexes, and in the later stages, destruction of the cerebral cortex is observed. The disease is incurable and leads to death 15-20 years after the first symptoms appear.
It has been shown in mice that delivery of huntingtin to ovarian tumor tissues significantly slows down tumor growth without side effects. However, the cancer did not develop resistance to this type of treatment. In addition, the drug has been successfully tested on other types of cancer, including breast, prostate, liver, brain, lung, skin, and colon.
