Mannose kills bee and could be the weapon against cancer

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Mannose kills bee and could be the weapon against cancer

A study reveals new insights into mannose, which has anticancer properties.

The study links the “bee syndrome” observed in honeybees to mannose’s ability to slow cancer cell replication and improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

New research by Sanford Burnham Prebys and the Osaka International Cancer Institute has revealed new insights into the anticancer properties of mannose.

Mannose kills bee and could be the weapon against cancer

Mannose is an important sugar involved in many physiological processes of the human body, and it has the effect of inhibiting the growth of cancer cells. The study, published today (July 18) in the journal eLife, suggests that mannose could serve as a valuable adjuvant therapy for cancer.

Dr Hudson Frieze, co-author of the study and Director of the Human Genetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys, said: “This sugar could provide cancer with additional help. Since mannose occurs naturally in the human body, it could improve cancer treatment without any unwanted side effects.”

Mannose is a sugar that the body attaches to proteins. This process helps stabilize the protein’s structure and facilitates their interactions with other molecules. This process, known as glycosylation, is critical to life, and any malfunction in this process has been linked to rare but often serious life-threatening human diseases.

“So far, the most promising therapeutic use of mannose is in the treatment of congenital disorders of glycation, which cause a variety of severe symptoms throughout the body,” Fritz said. “But we believe there may also be ways to harness mannose Treat cancer and other diseases.”

Although mannose has been shown to inhibit the growth of several types of cancer in the laboratory, the underlying mechanism has remained elusive. To address this question, the team looked at the unusual properties of mannose observed in an unlikely research subject: honeybees.

“Mannose has been known for over a century to be lethal to bees because they cannot process mannose the way humans do — it’s called the ‘bee syndrome,'” Fields said. “We wanted to see Whether there is any relationship between bee syndrome and the cancer-fighting properties of mannose could lead to a whole new approach to fighting cancer. “

The team successfully replicated bee syndrome using genetically engineered human cancer cells from fibrosarcoma, a rare cancer that affects connective tissue. They found that in the absence of the enzyme needed to metabolize mannose, the cells replicated slower and were significantly more susceptible to chemotherapy.

“We found that inducing bee syndrome in these cancer cells made them unable to synthesize the building blocks of DNA and replicate properly,” Fritz said. This helps explain the resistance to mannose that we observed in the lab. cancer effect.”

While exploiting bee syndrome has the potential to be a promising adjuvant therapy for cancer, the researchers caution that because the effect depends on key metabolic processes, more research is needed to determine which types of Cancer is most sensitive to mannose.

“If we can find cancers with lower activity of the enzyme that processes mannose, then treating them with mannose could give them enough of a boost to make chemotherapy more effective.” At the same time, the study highlights the broad potential of sugars in glycosylation for cancer therapy, an area of research that is still in its infancy.

“The glycobiology of sugar metabolism in cancer cells remains an untapped frontier, and it could be an untapped treasure trove of potential therapeutics just waiting to be discovered,” Fritz added.