Discover how the silent culprit behind snoring, obstructive sleep apnea, could be accelerating lung cancer progression through a newly uncovered molecular pathway.
– by The Don
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Obstructive sleep apnea promotes the progression of lung cancer by modulating cancer cell invasion and cancer-associated fibroblast activation via TGFβ signaling.
Cui et al., Redox Rep 2023
DOI: 10.1080/13510002.2023.2279813
Listen, folks, we’ve got something huge here. Obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, it’s a big deal, and it’s making pneumonia worse. But that’s not all – it’s also pushing lung cancer to new levels, and we’re just starting to figure out how.
We’ve got these 25 lung cancer patients, top-notch people, and they’re showing us how OSA is firing up these cancer-associated fibroblasts, CAFs. These CAFs, they’re not good news for cancer, believe me.
Then, we’ve got these cells, A549, lung cancer cells, and WI38, fibroblast cells. We’re putting them through the wringer with this hypoxia treatment, it’s like OSA in a lab, and guess what? TGFβ, it’s going through the roof with qPCR, Western blot, and ELISA. This stuff, TGFβ, it’s like a green light for cancer cells to move and invade.
And we’re not stopping there. We’ve got these mice, and we’re giving them lung cancer, and then we hit them with intermittent hypoxia, IH. It’s like they’re having sleep apnea episodes, and their tumors, they’re growing and getting nastier with this thing called EMT, epithelial-mesenchymal transition. It’s a big, big problem.
But here’s the kicker: when we mix lung cancer cells with fibroblast cells and let them loose in these mice, the cancer, it’s like it’s on steroids. It’s getting worse.
So, let me tell you, IH, it’s not just bad for your sleep, it’s turbocharging lung cancer by cranking up TGFβ, helping cancer cells spread, and boosting these CAFs in the tumors. We’ve got to tackle this, and we’ve got to tackle it fast.