- Colon cancer screening looks for the presence of polyps, some of which can become cancerous.
- One type, serrated adenoma, is considered pre-cancerous, can come back after it is removed and can lead to particularly invasive colon cancers.
- Researchers have discovered a mechanism that drives these cancers, which involves dysregulation of cholesterol metabolism, in a preclinical trial.
- This means there is the possibility this cholesterol dysregulation could be targeted by statins, and trials are planned to investigate this further.
Colon cancer is the
Screening for colon cancer is done either through a fecal immunochemical test, which looks for blood in the stool that can come from polyps, or through a colonoscopy, to visualize the polyps.
There are
- hyperplastic polyps that are typically benign
- adenomatous polyps (adenomas), which may turn into cancer.
Treatment generally involves removal of these polyps.
One particular type of polyp, known as a serrated adenoma, is considered precancerous, and needs to be removed completely.
This poses a challenge as the polyps are flat, rather than growing on stalks like other polyps, and are harder to visualize due to this and the part of the colon they appear in.
Cancers from this type of polyp make up
So far, it has been unclear exactly why this particular type of polyp was more likely to result in cancer than other types of polyps, but now, a metabolic mechanism has been proposed by a group of scientists from Weill Cornell Medicine, NY.
The results of their study appeared in in Nature Communications on December 13, 2023.
Previous research by some members of the team had shown that serrated adenoma polyps had lower levels of a protein kinase C (PKC) enzyme, which is responsible for regulating a number…
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