Lilite Sadovska
Researcher, Latvian Biomedical Research and Study center, Riga, Latvia
Lilite Sadovska is working as a researcher at the Latvian Biomedical Research and Study center she is currently reading for her PhD and studied Molecular Biology in the University of Latvia. Her current research works are focused on functional effects of cancer derived EVs on other tumor microenvironment cells, exercise induced EVs and their RNA content and functional effects, EVs RNAs as diagnostic or prognostic tools in cancer.
RNA content and functional effects of exercise-induced EVs in cancer cells
Several studies have shown that regular exercise can decrease the risk of several types of cancer as well as decrease treatment side effects, increase the quality of life, prevent recurrence, and increase survival of cancer patients. Our studies have shown that at least partially these effects might be facilitated through EVs released into circulation by various tissue cells during exercise. First, we developed a rat model that had physically active and sedentary animals, and we analyzed the circulating EV RNA content before and after exercise as well as in non-active animals and found 20 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between pre and post samples, and 52 DEGs between active and sedentary rat samples. Further, we examined the effects of these exercise induced EVs on the growth of prostate cancer in vivo. We saw that the median tumor volume was reduced by 35% in rats that received RUN-EV injections (P=0.03) comparing to the ones that received Ctrl-EVs. We did not see any statistically significant effect on the number of metastases or metastasis’s location between the groups. To address these questions also in humans, we have analyzed the circulating EV RNA content of female life-long runners and are looking into their effects on breast cancer cells in vitro.
