Some cancer mutations slow tumour growth

A typical cancer cell has thousands of mutations scattered throughout its genome and hundreds of mutated genes. However, only a handful of those genes, known as drivers, are responsible for cancerous traits such as uncontrolled growth. Cancer biologists have largely ignored the other mutations, believing they had little or no impact on cancer progression.

But a new study from MIT, Harvard University, the Broad Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital reveals, for the first time, that these so-called passenger mutations are not just along for the ride. When enough of them accumulate, they can slow or even halt tumor growth.

The findings, reported in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that cancer should be viewed as an evolutionary process whose course is determined by a delicate balance between driver-propelled growth and the gradual buildup of passenger mutations that are damaging to cancer, says Leonid Mirny, an associate professor of physics and health sciences and technology at MIT and senior author of the paper.

Furthermore, drugs that tip the balance in favour of the passenger mutations could offer a new way to treat cancer, the researchers say, beating it with its own weapon - mutations. Although the influence of a single passenger mutation is minuscule, ''collectively they can have a profound effect,'' Mirny says. ''If a drug can make them a little bit more deleterious, it's still a tiny effect for each passenger, but collectively this can build up.''

Lead author of the paper is Christopher McFarland, a graduate student at Harvard. Other authors are Kirill Korolev, a Pappalardo post-doctoral fellow at MIT, Gregory Kryukov, a senior computational biologist at the Broad Institute, and Shamil Sunyaev, an associate professor at Brigham and Women's.

Power struggle
Cancer can take years or even decades to develop, as cells gradually accumulate the necessary driver mutations. Those mutations usually stimulate oncogenes such as Ras, which promotes cell growth, or turn off tumour-suppressing genes such as p53, which normally restrains growth.