THURSDAY, Oct. 16 (HealthDay News) 星期四， 2008年10月16日（综合讯））

-- Nicotine may help push breast cancer cells from the original tumor to other parts of the body, contributing to the metastasis that so often kills patients.

尼古丁可能有助于加快乳腺癌细胞从原发部位肿瘤转移到身体的其他部位，最终造成患者的死亡。

Besides serving as yet another warning against smoking, the finding may also point to new targets for cancer drugs. However, the study's lead author stressed it is still too early to pinpoint the exact role nicotine may play in breast cancer's spread.

除了警示吸烟有害健康之外，这项发现可能还能揭示出治疗癌症的新靶点。然而，这项研究的领导者强调，确定“尼古丁在乳腺癌转移的作用”的结论还为时过早。

"I don't know what the potential is," said Dr. Chang Yan Chen, of the department of radiation oncology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston.

“我不知道确切的原因是什么！ ” 波士顿贝斯以色列女执事医疗中心和哈佛医学院放射肿瘤科的陈常艳博士说。

 "This adds to the whole body of literature on how things that we ingest could potentially be harmful in terms of causing breast cancer or making existing breast cancer worse," added Dr. Julian Kim, a breast cancer surgeon and chief of oncologic surgery at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland.

“这个研究结果补充了以往全部文献中 引起乳腺癌的原因或使乳腺癌预后差的因素”克里夫兰大学医院医学中心乳腺癌外科医生兼肿瘤外科主任朱利安博士补充强调。

The findings were published in the Oct. 15 issue of Cancer Research.

这篇文章刊登在2008年10月15日的《癌症研究》。

Nicotine, a component of tobacco, has been connected with a variety of malignancies -- not only lung cancer, but also head and neck cancer, prostate cancer, and more.

"It has been known that there are 10 to 12 nicotine receptors that express on the surface of various cells," Chen explained. "We do not know why nicotine receptors express in all the cell surfaces from various tissue origins, but we do know that nicotine is an important neuron transmitter in the central nervous system. It has been reported that nicotine can promote certain intra-cellular signaling in lung cancer."

尼古丁，烟草的一个组成部分，一直与各种恶性肿瘤有相关性，-不仅是肺癌，而且头部和颈部癌，前列腺癌等。

“据悉，有10至12尼古丁受体表达表面上的各种细胞， ”陈博士解释。 “我们不知道为什么尼古丁受体表达各种组织器官的所有细胞表面，但我们知道尼古丁是一个重要的神经递质在中枢神经系统。据报道，尼古丁能促进肺癌某些细胞内信号传导。

So, while much of the research on nicotine has focused on its effects on the body's nervous system, recent research indicates that nicotine can also activate signaling pathways in non-neuronal cells, including tumor cells.

因此，许多尼古丁的研究重点集中在尼古丁对人体中枢神经系统的影响。最近的研究表明，尼古丁还可以激活非神经细胞的信号传导通路，包括肿瘤细胞。

In a series of lab experiments, Chen and colleagues discovered that certain breast epithelial-like cells produce different subtypes of the nicotine receptor nAChR, as do certain breast tumor cells.

在一系列实验室实验中，陈博士和他的同事发现：某些乳腺上皮样细胞产生不同的尼古丁受体nAChR亚型，同乳腺癌肿瘤细胞有关。

When these receptors were bound with nicotine, they started signaling the cells to grow and migrate. The findings were confirmed in mice.

当这些受体与尼古丁结合后，他们开始信号传导致使细胞生长和迁移。调查结果证实在小鼠体内。

Nicotine did not appear to be enough to spur tumor migration on its own, although scientists don't yet know which molecules nicotine partners with to do so.

尼古丁自已似乎没有足以刺激肿瘤的迁移，科学家还不知道是什么分子同尼古丁合作完成这些迁移。

"I took two cell lines and checked to see if the cells expressed the nicotine receptor, and I found they did," Chen said. "I found that certain signaling is upregulated, but [nicotine] itself cannot push the cell to undergo tumorigenesis [cancer formation]. The conclusion is, it probably can activate a certain intracellular signaling, but really, it depends on an individual's genetic background."

“我提取了两个细胞系来观察检查，看看细胞是否表达尼古丁受体，结果我发现了这一现象， ”他说。 “我发现，某些特定的传导信号上调，但[尼古丁]本身不能推动细胞进行肿瘤发生[癌症形成] 。结论是，它很可能激活某些细胞内信号，但实际上，它取决于个人的遗传背景。

"Nicotine had some effects on these tumor cells that could eventually be harmful to a patient," Kim added. "It made breast cancer cells grow more vigorously. It made them have a higher capacity to become invasive, and it made cells that are sort of precancerous turn in a direction towards cancer."

“尼古丁能够影响肿瘤细胞生长迁移，最终影响病人的预后， ”金补充说。 “它使乳腺癌细胞的增长更有力。这使它们有较高的能力具有侵袭性，使那些癌前细胞演变发展成为癌症” 。