Ion channels : functional expression and therapeutic potential in cancer

Ion channels: functional expression and therapeutic potential in cancer

Colloquium on Ion Channels and Cancer

Scott P. Fraser1 & Luis A. Pardo2 Neuroscience Solutions to Cancer Research Group, Division of Cell and Molecular Biology, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK Abteilung Molekulare Biologie Neuronaler Signale, Max-Planck-Institut für Experimentelle Medizin, Hermann-Rein-Strasse 3, 37075 Göttingen, Germany

Björn Nordenström has utilized concepts in physics, mathematics, chemistry, physiology and immunology; combined with a massive amount of experimentation; to describe a system of continuous energy circulation and circulating electrical currents in living systems.

Living cells consist of ions, charged molecules, membranes and organelles, which are responsive to electrical fields and currents and sometimes even generate electrical activity.

When a non-uniform electric field is generated near living cells, polar molecules will move towards the higher field intensity.

When an altering current is generated the molecules stay in place, their reaction being only vibration.

However, in dividing cells the altering field causes the molecules to move towards the furrow, which is the narrow place between the two daughter cells.

Using this principle the scientists had a way to tell apart normal cells from dividing cells, which are normally cancerous cells.

Biologically Closed Electric Circuits, Björn E. W. Nordenström, MD,
(Nordic Medical Publications, Arsenalsgatan 4, S-1ll 47 Stockholm, Sweden),

This remarkable book introduces a new physiologic concept that could solve many long-standing biologic problems.

His investigations carried him well beyond the original problem and produced original insights into such fundamental processes as wound healing, organ development and differentiation, and extra-cellular fluid dynamics.

The primary direction of the book is understanding the interaction of malignant tumors with their surrounding tissues.

It leads on the one hand to a possible mechanism of carcinogenesis and on the other to a proposed new mode of therapy of malignancies.

Dr. Nordenström has discovered a new circulatory system that is based on spontaneously occurring electrical potentials.

Potential gradients have long been known to develop in normal organs as a result of metabolism and in injured or diseased tissue as a result of hemorrhage or necrosis.

The investigations detailed in this book reveal that these potentials are more than just a source of error in bioelectric measurements, that, in fact, they drive electric current through what the author calls biologically closed electric circuits (BCEC).

Blood plasma and interstitial fluid are examples of ionic media capable of effectively conducting current.

Blood vessel walls and the cells and membranes that surround interstitial spaces insulate these conducting media from their surroundings.

Plasma and interstitial fluid are electrically joined across capillary membranes. Thus, blood vessels and interstitial spaces function as insulated electric cables that carry current and transport charged particles over short and long distances.

In the mid 1950s Dr. Nordenström observed a peculiar series of radiating and circumferential patterns surrounding a primary carcinoma of the lung on a chest radiograph.

He called this pattern corona structures, because of the similarity to the corona of the sun.

A prospective study over several years revealed that corona structures were present with considerable frequency around pulmonary malignancies, pulmonary granulomas, and even hamartomas.

The alteration of corona structures with time and the disappearance of some of them with the development of pneumothorax led Dr. Nordenström to postulate that some parts of this radiographic pattern resulted from an unexplained effect of pulmonary masses on distribution of lung water.

Thus began a series of experiments that resulted in his conclusion that fluctuating electrical potentials originating within lung masses could alter extracellular fluid dynamics.

The author demonstrated that electrical potentials do exist within lung masses by performing a series of measurements in patients undergoing needle biopsy.

After preliminary experiments, he succeeded in reproducing corona structures in dogs by inplanting artificial "tumors" that produced potential gradients similar to those measured in human pulmonary masses.

Platelets and leukocytes carry a surplus of fixed electronegative surface charges.

Thus a spontaneously occurring positive polarity in injured tissue results in accumulation of platelets and then thrombosis of capillaries surrounding a site of injury.

his mechanism can also account for attraction of leukocytes to a site of positive electrical potential in injured or diseased tissue.

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Tags:

• Ion
• Channels
• and
• Cancer