Taipei, March. 12 (CNA) A Taiwanese scholar-led study found that small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) cells generate their own electrical activity that mimics neuronal signals and drives tumor progression, a finding with potential implications for new neurological treatment of cancer.
With an average survival time of around seven to 10 months after diagnosis, SCLC accounts for around one in 10 lung cancer cases, the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in Taiwan, said Chen Jin-shing (陳晉興), head of National Taiwan University Hospital’s (NTUH) Department of Surgery.
“If we cut off its water [nutrition] and electricity supply [neural stimulation], cancer cells should be controlled and stop growing — but SCLC is an exception,” Chen said at a press conference at the hospital on Wednesday.
He added that the criteria for deterioration in fast-growing SCLC have remained unclear for decades.
However, a study led by Leanne Li (李力恩) — a former medical student of Chen at National Taiwan University — found that some SCLC cells can “actually generate their own electrical activity,” rendering the “cutting off electricity” treatment approach ineffective, Chen said.
The study was published in the top science journal Nature last month.
Li, head of the Cancer-Neuroscience Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in the United Kingdom, said that electrical activity is a key characteristic of neurons, which transmit signals through electrical impulses.
“People usually don’t associate cancer with electrical activity,” she said.
However, she and her team “were very curious to know whether SCLC has electrical activity” and, if such activity exists, “whether it is a key causal factor in its highly aggressive nature,” the lead researcher said.
The study, conducted in collaboration with top institutions worldwide, including the University of Cambridge and NTUH, confirmed that electrical activity is exhibited in SCLC, which consists of neuroendocrine (NE) cells — originally used to receive neuronal input and release hormones into the blood — and non-neuroendocrine (non-NE) cancer cells.
Utilizing luminescent markers to detect electrical activity in SCLC cells cultured both in vitro and in vivo, the study revealed that while mutated NE cells in SCLC generate intrinsic electrical signals that directly drive tumor aggression, non-NE cells function as support cells, supplying energy, Li said.
Experiments using laboratory mice with SCLC and tetrodotoxin — a toxin found in pufferfish that suppresses electrical activity — also found that when the ability of cancer cells to generate electrical activity was inhibited, tumor metastasis decreased, and the survival rate of the mice improved, she added.
The “most interesting” discovery is how SCLC interacts with the nervous system at different stages, with early-stage tumors actively attracting nerve fibers, while late-stage SCLC shows a significant decline in neural connections, Li said.
“Our interpretation is that by the late stage, SCLC can generate its own electrical activity, making it less reliant on external neural input for the support [of signal transmission],” she said.
Li noted that while it was previously known that some cancer cells can resemble nerve cells at gene expression level, the study is “one of the first proofs that their [cancer cells] electrical activity can directly drive tumor progression.”
Beyond existing cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and immunotherapy, future approaches could explore neurological treatments based on the study’s findings, she said, citing antiepileptic drugs as a potential example to inhibit tumor growth.
