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It was back in the mid-1990s that Djamgoz first developed what he would later call the cellular excitability or “CELEX” the “CELEX” hypothesis of cancer metastasis. He identified voltage-gated sodium ion channels in many types of epithelial cancer cells that did not belong, and which led to cancer cells producing action potentials as if they were neurons or cardiomyocytes.
“These are normally inert tissues in your gut or skin,” Djamgoz pointed out. “They become hyperactive, excitable, invasive, antisocial, and it is this electrical excitability that drives the cancer cells into an invasive mode.”
The electrical excitability of cancer cells escaped notice for years because traditional methods of measurement, patch clamp, or microelectrode recordings, lacked the sensitivity to capture the signals.
“Instead of poking the cells with micro-electrodes, we want to plate the cells in a petri-dish with these gold microelectrode arrays on the bottom,” Djamgoz continued. “They are now sitting on these electrodes and buzzing with action potentials!”
Not only do cancer cells become unexpected generators of bioelectricity, but they also communicate with the nervous system, seemingly feeding off of it. In a paper published June 2020 in Biochimica et Biophysica Acta — Reviews on Cancer, Djamgoz showed that sympathetic nervous system stimulation seems to drive the early stages of cancer proliferation, while parasympathetic input drives invasiveness and metastasis.
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