Researchers at the University of Virginia are using a common type of brewer’s yeast to study cancer.
Unlike most other yeasts, S. Pombe, which is used in brewing beer, has a structure like human cells, making it ideal for study in laboratory settings.
Scientists at the UVA School of Medicine’s Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics are studying the yeast’s ability to go dormant, something that cancer cells can also do in humans.
Dormant cancer cells are harder to detect, often evade cancer treatments and can lead to relapses.
“What we are hoping is that our research done in yeast on cell dormancy can help us understand cancer dormancy and how these cells are able to wake up after some time,” said Maciej Gluc, a second year PHD student at UVA.
The researchers hope that understanding the dormancy cycle will help make diagnosing cancer relapses easier well as treating cases.