Margottini, L. How cancer wreaks havoc on bone. ScienceNOW Daily News. 5 Feb 2010.
Cancer is a harsh topic for a lot of people in the world. Scientists say that they are one step closer to decreasing the effects of bone cancer. An insulin-like hormone is known to speed up the destruction of bone caused by malignant tumors. If a drug can be found to slow or stop this damage from occurring, it will help a lot of people.
Relaxin is a hormone that has been tied to cancer for a long time. This hormone is linked to endometiral and prostate cancers, as well as, thyroid, breast, and myeloma. This hormone will boost the destruction of bones in cancerous tumors. Ferlin and colleagues found that another hormone, INSL3, acts the same as relaxin. INSL3 is known to pair up with osteoblasts, which builds bone tissue. When there is not enough INSL3 in the body, the bone tissue deteriorates. Ferlin thought that Relaxin would act the same way. His study showed that he was right.
Ferlin studied the effects of Relaxin on culture human bone cells, which proved his theory. His research goes into great detail, but all that is important is that the hormone can increase bone growth. The researchers added an anti-relaxin antibody to the cells. Thi prevented the relaxin from binding with receptors and triggering bone damage. This finding is huge for cancer patients.
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