Stress and Cancer
Sevda Çelik1, Nilsu Çini2, Özüm Atasoy2, Oytun Erbaş1,3
1ERBAS Institute of Experimental Medicine, Illinois, USA & Gebze, Turkey
2Department of Radiation Oncology, Kartal City Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
3Department of Physiology, Medical Faculty of Demiroğlu Bilim University, Istanbul, Turkey
Keywords: Cancer, cSRC, Myc, oncogene, stress, tumor suppressor gene, Wnt/β-catenin
Abstract
Cancer, whose incidence is increasing day by day, is the uncontrolled division and proliferation of a cell. One of the factors that cause cancer is stress. Stress factors trigger the secretion of cortisol. Cortisol readily crosses the blood-brain barrier and binds to high affinity glucocorticoid (GR) and low affinity mineralocorticoid (MR) receptors. Cortisol activates the Wnt/β-catenin or PI3K/AKT signaling pathways by increasing the expression of growth factors and causes the proliferation of cells. These signaling pathways are associated with oncogenes such as Myc, cSRC. Oncogenes are the transformed form of protooncogenes and they transform normal cells into cancerous cells. Tumor suppressor genes are genes that fight with oncogenes and play a negative role in the cell proliferation process. In this review, all these signaling pathways triggered by stress and how they may cause cancer was mentioned and discussed.
Cite this article as: Çelik S, Çini N, Atasoy Ö, Erbaş O. Stress and Cancer. JEB Med Sci 2021;2(1):76-79.
The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.