A group of scientists led by Professor Xavier Pares of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, has published a research on AKR1B10, an enzyme that is detected in large quantities only in lung cancers, particularly those caused by smoking.
This enzyme can appear even when the cancer has not yet developed and lesions are precancerous. Thus this molecule would serve as a good marker in the diagnosis and prognosis of the disease. Moreover, its activity could play a relevant role in the development of lung cancer, which makes the research of great interest for potential future therapeutical applications as well.
According to researchers, both the experiments using test tubes and cell cultures revealed that the enzyme lowers the levels of the most active form of vitamin A (retinoic acid), a strong anticancerous agent. This is achieved by its strong retinal reductase activity, which favours chemical reduction transformation, thus causing retinal, the precursor of retinoic acid, to transform into its least active form, retinol.