Giving T cells extra batteries supercharges them against cancer

https://newatlas.com/cancer/cancer-immunotherapy-t-cells-extra-batteries-supercharges/

by peutetre • 2 years ago

193 85 2 years ago

Zelphyr2• 2 years ago

This is why good quality nutrition is so important. It's like giving all of our cells--not just T cells--extra batteries.

tjohns• 2 years ago

To be fair, I'd prefer not to give the cancer cells extra batteries.

Zelphyr2• 2 years ago

In truth, it's usually the opposite when our bodies are fueled properly.

adamredwoods3• 2 years ago

A common goal, but tumors mutate and bypass a lot of normal cell functions. Keep in mind that when dying cancer patients starve in the end, the tumors don't slow.

https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/study-unveils-new-way-starve...

https://news.feinberg.northwestern.edu/2024/05/02/drug-shows...

https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2023/01/30/starving-cancer...

vaylian• 2 years ago

How is this related to the number of mitochondria in a cell?

agumonkey2• 2 years ago

I believe that the opposite is useful, fasting -> autophagy -> improved mitochondrial health (not sure). Maybe that's what parent tried to say.

1oooqooq2• 2 years ago

nah. let's base the entire world diet on numbers of calories, provided by crops which are collected annually or biannually so we can have an efficient futures market :thumbsupemoji

tekla• 2 years ago

Yep, we prefer to keep people alive first since its hard to care about the health and well being of dead people.

Laaas• 2 years ago

The team cultured BMSCs and T cells together, and after 48 hours found that up to a quarter of the T cells had gained extra mitochondria. The researchers dubbed these juiced up immune cells Mito+.

What an incredibly simple idea. Just scale it up.

gorkish• 2 years ago

How many do you have to have before you can start using the Force?

ImHereToVote• 2 years ago

"The midichlorian is the forcehouse of the cell."

CoastalCoder• 2 years ago

"Whatever the stupid, lazy writers at Disney needed it to be this week." - The Critical Drinker*

* I imagine

highwaylights• 2 years ago

Less than you’d think. Not even master Yoda has a mitochondria count that high!

tomrod• 2 years ago

A more direct reference, though maybe obscure these days, is _Parasite_ _Eve_

gl-prod• 2 years ago

Come on, T cells, you can do it

1970-01-01• 2 years ago

..in mice

dopylitty• 2 years ago

Previous studies have shown that cancer cells can use nanotubes like “tiny tentacles” to slurp up mitochondria from immune cells.

Biology is nuts.

Regarding messing with T-cells I wonder how evolution came up with the current number of mitochondria per cell. Usually with these things there's some kind of push and pull between the benefits of something and the drawbacks. Or sometimes it's just whatever works. I know mitochondria can have some negative impacts on cells sometimes by releasing the byproducts of metabolism (reactive oxygen species) or triggering programmed cell death.

golergka• 2 years ago

Could it be just amount of energy available to the organism? Modern humans are in completely unique position relative to all history of life on Earth, having access to as much food (and energy) as we want, and having a widespread problem of eating too much. Evolution didn't have any chance to catch up with this reality.

kurthr• 2 years ago

I really appreciate the commentary here on HN. The headline was awful enough, but the quotes, really let me know the level of horror movie aesthetic there is in the commentary supposedly about biology.

Thanks, NewAtlas, but it's just not the mixed metaphor I'm looking for.

wnevets• 2 years ago

Regarding messing with T-cells I wonder how evolution came up with the current number of mitochondria per cell.

An over active immune is generally a bad thing for the host. Maybe a higher number increases auto immune disease?

devmor• 2 years ago

Not just a bad thing - one of the worst possible things. That's how you get chronic inflammation.

derefr4• 2 years ago

Dunno about mitochondria as a cell feature specifically. But there exists a similar constraint on the total size of the DNA in the cell nucleus (and therefore the ability of a species to survive polyploid mutations that double-or-more the amount of DNA per cell); and I believe we do (think that we) understand the cause of that one.

This polyploidy constraint only exists for animal cells, not for plant cells. Plants can — and frequently do! — get as polyploid as they want; but animals have a ceiling.

And that implies that the constraint has something to do with one of the main differences between plant and animal cells: namely, the fact that animal cells — specifically, blood cells — must move and flow along channels composed of other cells; while plant cells are fixed in place by their stiff cellulose membranes, with only fluids and tissues flowing.

The problem animal cells have with polyploidy, is seemingly that it makes their cells physically larger — and in so doing, causes biological architectural assumptions like "blood cells can travel through narrow capillaries to deliver oxygen to cells within extremity tissues" to just fail to hold. The capillaries, when composed of larger cells, are narrower; and the blood cells flowing through, composed of larger cells, won't fit.

(Evolution could in theory resolve this single problem by just scaling all features up in size. But that causes far more problems than it solves: the square-cube law requires huge changes to things like muscles and metabolism to keep up with increased size, if it's even possible; and some organs/tissues just require to be a certain size to function — like the nephrons of the kidneys — such that these instead need to stay the same size, evolving distinct adaptations to handle the increased size of the cells that travel to/through them.)

cyberax• 2 years ago

blood cells can travel through narrow capillaries to deliver oxygen to cells within extremity tissues

Mammalian red blood cells do not have DNA or mitochondria. They lose them during the maturation process in the bone marrow.

But apparently this might just be one of the evolution's blind turns. Birds have even faster metabolism with higher oxygen requirements, and their red blood cells have nucleus.

rolisz• 2 years ago

From listening to Michael Levin, he describes how in newts you can multiply the DNA of kidney cells (or some tubules around there). The cells become larger, so they adapt by forming the same size of tubule with fewer cells. If you keep duplicating the DNA, at some point a single cell is enough to form the tubule, which it does by bending around.

shagie2• 2 years ago

The fun part is scaling the other way... for tiny animals.

https://www.science.org/content/article/scienceshot-amoeba-s...

You can't shrink down to the size of an amoeba without losing parts of yourself. That's the lesson one researcher is taking away from a microscopic analysis of the fairy wasp (Megaphragma mymaripenne), which at a mere 200 micrometers in length is one of the world's smallest animals (shown compared to a paramecium and amoeba above). When the scientist compared the neurons of adult and pupae fairy wasps, he discovered that more than 95% of adult neurons lack a nucleus.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S14678...

The smallest insects are comparable in size to unicellular organisms. Thus, their size affects their structure not only at the organ level, but also at the cellular level. Here we report the first finding of animals with an almost entirely anucleate nervous system. Adults of the smallest flying insects of the parasitic wasp genus Megaphragma (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) have only 339–372 nuclei in the central nervous system, i.e., their ganglia, including the brain, consist almost exclusively of processes of neurons. In contrast, their pupae have ganglia more typical of other insects, with about 7400 nuclei in the central nervous system. During the final phases of pupal development, most neuronal cell bodies lyse. As adults, these insects have many fewer nucleated neurons, a small number of cell bodies in different stages of lysis, and about 7000 anucleate cells. Although most neurons lack nuclei, these insects exhibit many important behaviors, including flight and searching for hosts.

And the Wikipedia article for the species - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphragma_mymaripenne

In particular:

Researchers believe the wasp can survive without nuclei because of its short lifespan; the proteins manufactured during the pupal stage last the animal long enough to complete its life journey.

ceedan2• 2 years ago

Regarding messing with T-cells I wonder how evolution came up with the current number of mitochondria per cell.

Cells can increase their number of mitochondria in response to things (mitochondrial biogenesis). I don't know anything about how that works out in the immune system, but have read about it related to fat cells and exercise.

This was also my first thought, and it seems like "giving them extra batteries" accomplishes the same outcome

ben_w• 2 years ago

I wonder how evolution came up with the current number of mitochondria per cell

One of my probably-wrong ideas that I can't usefully ask* is if chronic fatigue/post-acute infection syndromes may be due to insufficient mitochondria for whatever reason.

* if I ask StackExchange, I'll probably phrase it wrong enough to have it closed; if I ask an LLM then it will probably make something up because if the answer exists at all it is probably behind a paywall, and even if it isn't they do that 10-20% of them time anyway.

wizzwizz4• 2 years ago

Closure on a Stack Exchange site isn't supposed to be permanent: it just means "this question isn't answerable (by us) yet". Maybe try, and see what happens?

agumonkey2• 2 years ago

Biology is nuts.

for this particular case I 100% agree. I grew up to accept a wide range of complexity at the cell level, but this blew through the roof.

Log_out_• 2 years ago

imagine feeding cancer anti mitochondria

VyseofArcadia• 2 years ago

Incredible result, but my god do I hate this kind of headline.

kthartic• 2 years ago

Why? As a laymen (who knows nothing about "T cells") the analogy helps

phkahler• 2 years ago

Batteries == Mitochondira

So I wondered how one could increase the number of mitochondria and quickly found this nice piece from 2017 about promoting mitochondrial fission in mid-life (ok in fruit flys):

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00525-4

I'm pretty sure maintaining mitochondrial health will help a lot of health problems. They seem to come up every little while in regard to many different pathologies.

rKarpinski• 2 years ago

So I wondered how one could increase the number of mitochondria

Lots of Zone-2 training. Inigo San-Milan & George Brooks are the two researchers to look at this for in humans.

ceedan2• 2 years ago

Their research seems to be in relation to muscle and fat - not the immune system and cancer. I wouldn't expect zone 2 training to improve "T cell exhaustion" where mitochondria are stolen from T-cells by cancer cells.

Previous studies have shown that cancer cells can use nanotubes like “tiny tentacles” to slurp up mitochondria from immune cells.

aidenn02• 2 years ago

Yeah, batteries was a funny metaphor given that everybody from my generation learned that Mitochondria are the "powerhouse of the cell" in Junior High.

andrewflnr• 2 years ago

From the headline, I was almost sure it was going to be about giving T-cells ATP, which is much more commonly (and appropriately) analogized to biological batteries.

anigbrowl• 2 years ago

Completely spitballing here, but if bone marrow cells help charge up mitochondria (as this new study suggests), then strong healthy bones are a good defense against cancer. Resistance training (weightlifting being the most common variety) is well known to improve bone health so maybe this is another reason to practice it.

amelius• 2 years ago

Maybe the reason elephants don't get more cancer despite their comparatively large cell count.

M95D2• 2 years ago

Or maybe you want to create Parasite Eve? :-)

aidenn02• 2 years ago

In America, batteries are have cells. In Soviet Russa^W^W Poorly Written Headlines, cells have batteries.

ugh123• 2 years ago

Great! When can I buy Mitochondria Supplements at the grocery store? /s

dazzlevolta• 2 years ago

For what type(s) of cancer does this seem to be promising?

adamredwoods3• 2 years ago

Mostly blood cancers. It's not quite there for solid tumors.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/types/immunoth...

alexey-salmin2• 2 years ago

Intriguingly, Mito+ cells could multiply quickly and pass their extra mitochondria to the new cells.

Is this accurate? I thought T cells can't multiply.

JPLeRouzic• 2 years ago

It seems T cells do not continuously divide by mitosis in their mature state but can undergo controlled proliferation when activated by an antigen:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5868360/

euroderf• 2 years ago

Given the American penchant for productizing anything even vaguely health-related, I expect to soon see on supermarket shelves some sort of "Mitochondria Milkshake", jam-packed with mitochondria.

M95D2• 2 years ago

Intriguingly, Mito+ cells could multiply quickly and pass their extra mitochondria to the new cells.

Isn't that a risk of leukemia? One that could've killed the mice, but after more than the 60 days of the study?

But even 60+ days vs. 20 days is better, so...

randito• 2 years ago

For people who want to learn biochemsistry and subsequently be in awe and the complexity and mechanisms, there's a great beginner book, The Machinery of Life. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6601267-the-machinery-of...

I found my way there after an Alan Kay video -- OPSLA 1997 - The computer revolution hasnt happened yet: https://youtu.be/oKg1hTOQXoY?t=1787

On the subject of awe, here's another from Kurszsegat - The Most Complex Language in the World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYPFenJQciw

zackmorris• 2 years ago

Related, a seventh person has been "cured" (article quotes) of HIV/AIDS after a stem cell transplant:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/seventh-person-cu...

The donor had 2 copies of the CCR5 gene, which resulted in HIV not being able to enter immune cells (like T cells) as efficiently, giving them time to fight it off.

Giving T cells extra batteries supercharges them against cancer

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