Control of the Activity of Mobile Elements in Cancer Cells as a Strategy for Anticancer Therapy

One important direction in cancer prevention is the development of novel strategies that can be used in treatment by affecting the mechanisms of the regulatory pathways and genomic elements involved in malignant transformation. The strategy proposed in this study is to initiate cell death mechanisms in response to the depletion of the energy resources within a cancer cell due to the uncontrolled spread of mobile genetic elements throughout its genome. The calculation results obtained using a preliminary mathematical model that simulates the cellular bioenergetic balance, taking the energy consumption for retrotransposition of the mobile elements such as LINE-1 and SINE into account, show that this scenario is plausible. Intracellular resources undergo a critical redistribution when affecting the genomic defense mechanisms and the LINE-1 transcription rate. This leads to a sharp increase in energy consumption for retrotransposon transcription that causes a significant decrease in the pool of free ATP in the cell.