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Columns::September 24, 2001
Tackling ‘Terrorism in America’
Provost appoints interim dean of new school
Blue Key honors four for their contributions to state, university
President addresses minority enrollment at first University Council meeting
Worthwhile IDEAS
New director appointed to International Public Service and Outreach
Kudos
Campus News
Professor studies ‘complex’ role that carbohydrates play in cancer
By Allyson Mann
tiny@uga.edu
The nickname “Hawkeye” is a souvenir from Michael Pierce’s undergraduate days during the post-M*A*S*H era. A biology
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| Michael Pierce is working with an enzyme that is implicated in the spread of cancer cells. The members of his lab are (from left) Hua-bei Guo, postdoctoral associate; Intaek Lee, graduate student; Maria Kamar, graduate student; and Jin-Kyu Lee, research assistant professor. Photo by Tori Bauer |
student who wore wire-rimmed glasses, long hair and a beard, Pierce resembled the Donald Sutherland character--a medical doctor also named Hawkeye Pierce--in the award-winning movie from 1970. There’s a certain irony in the nickname, since Pierce’s eyesight is less than perfect; his intellectual vision, however, is sharply focused.
He found his purpose 20 years ago after his father was diagnosed with cancer and died within several months. Pierce had been studying complex carbohydrates in a broad sense but decided to narrow his research.
“I decided that I really had to understand as much as I could about the involvement of carbohydrates in cancer,” he says. “That’s really been my whole focus since that time--to understand what happens to carbohydrates when cells become cancerous, with the goal of finding a way to inhibit cancer or at least detect it earlier.”
Now supported by grants of more than $2 million from the National Cancer Institute, Pierce’s research is revealing what cancer does at the molecular level. He and his team have identified an enzyme that could help unravel the mystery of how cancer spreads in the human body. If Pierce can find an inhibitor of this enzyme that will work in the human body, he may be able to develop a drug that would bind to that enzyme and prevent or slow the migration of cancer cells.
“The real killer is when cancer spreads,” he says. “Almost every cancer that kills does so because it invades tissues and then moves to another location. If you can remove the tumor and irradiate everything around it, there’s a good chance the person will survive. If the cancer cells have gone to another tissue, you can’t really find the tumor until it grows larger and by then it’s very difficult to treat.”
Pierce identified this enzyme by examining the carbohydrate structures, similar to the branches of a tree, that are present on the surface of cells. These carbohydrates are integral to the proper function of receptors on a cell’s surface that serve as a communication network.
Receptors receive messages at the cell surface and send information back to the nucleus--information that influences whether a cell divides, stays in one place, or migrates to another part of the body.
When a cell becomes cancerous, these carbohydrate branches change and so do the messages sent back to the nucleus. Starting with the altered branches, Pierce and his team worked backward to find what caused these carbohydrate changes, eventually identifying the enzyme GnT-V, which was patented through the UGA Research Foundation.
Subsequent studies have revealed that when a cell is forced to produce large amounts of GnT-V, adhesion goes down and the rate of migration goes up. Overproduced in many cancer cells, GnT-V accelerates cancer invasion. Inhibiting GnT-V activity appears to slow progression of some cancers. If Pierce can create a specific inhibitor of GnT-V, preventing the spread of some cancers might be achieved with a simple injection.
“Cancer biotechnology is now starting to yield promise,” Pierce says. “The key to curing cancer still will be early detection and early intervention that keeps the cancer from spreading.”
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