This is neither a cut, shining deep sea fish nor an art project from kindergarten, but in colon tissue. On the right in the photo, the tissue is healthy, but on the left a tumor grows up. While small red dots can only be seen in healthy tissue, they romp over where the tumor grows. The points are the body’s “oncostatin m”.
People who suffer from a chronic inflammatory bowel disease such as ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease have a higher risk of developing colon cancer. Doctors can slow down the course of the disease of the chronic disease or relieve their symptoms – but not all patients address the existing treatments. Now it could also be clear why. “It was particularly interesting for us to see that patients with high oncostatin M levels do not respond to several common therapies,” explains Ahmed Hegazy from the Charité University Medicine Berlin. “This means that the Oncostatin M levels could help to predict the treatment and serve as a biomarker for a more serious illness.”
Further studies also showed that oncostatin M and the protein interleukin-22 can even actively favor chronic inflammation in the intestine. In tissue samples of patients with colon cancer, which was triggered by chronic inflammation of the intestine, the team found a particularly large number of receptors for the messenger oncostatin m around the tumors – this is exactly what can be seen in the picture. At the same time, interleukin-22, which usually protects the tissue, increases the number of oncostatin m receptors. This creates a devastating chain reaction: What should actually protect the intestine unintentionally prepares the soil for inflammation and tumor growth.
“These two immune messengers act together and reinforce the inflammation by pulling more immune cells into the intestine – like a fire that is getting more and more fuel,” explains Hegazy. “In our models, we specifically blocked the binding sites for oncostatin M and determined a significant reduction in both chronic inflammation and the associated cancer.” In the future, researchers could develop new therapy approaches for both chronic inflammatory bowel diseases and colon cancer.
