Hypothesis
Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
Uncontrolled Intracellular Osmotic Pressure Leads to Cancer
Version 1
: Received: 19 June 2020 / Approved: 21 June 2020 / Online: 21 June 2020 (13:41:21 CEST)
How to cite: Zhang, F.; Jiang, R.; Zhang, C. Uncontrolled Intracellular Osmotic Pressure Leads to Cancer. Preprints 2020, 2020060270. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202006.0270.v1 Zhang, F.; Jiang, R.; Zhang, C. Uncontrolled Intracellular Osmotic Pressure Leads to Cancer. Preprints 2020, 2020060270. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202006.0270.v1
Abstract
At present more than 9 million people die of cancer every year. Simple and broad-spectrum drugs are still an urgent need for cancer patients. Recently, we proposed a new hypothesis that intracellular osmotic pressure (IOP) is the driving force of cell division, and abnormal tumor proliferation is the result of uncontrolled IOP in cells. On the one hand, aneuploidy and abnormal function of Na+/K+ pump lead to a faster rise of IOP in tumor cell than normal cells, on the other hand, abnormality of cytoskeleton assembly leads to the decrease of tolerance limit of cell membrane (TLCM) of tumor cells for resisting IOP. This hypothesis predicts: 1)Tumor cells were more intolerant to hypotonic stress than normal cells. 2) Maligancies may be sellectively killed by a suddenn increase of IOP and combined with decrease of the TLCM of tumors. Na+/K+ pump inhibitors can promotely increase the IOP of tumor cells and cytoskeleton inhibitors can dramatically lower the TLCM of tumor cells. Therefore, Na+/K+ pump and cytoskeleton inhibitors may have a synergetic effect to kill tumor cells. 3) Molecules regulating cell osmolality may be new targets for cancer treatment.
Keywords
Cell division; Intracellular osmotic pressure; Tolerance limit of cell membrane; Carcinogenesis; Aneuploidy; Na+/K+ pump; Cytoskeleton; Oncogene; Tumor suppressor
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Oncology and Oncogenics
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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