Cancer develops when the body’s systems for controlling cell growth break down, allowing cells to multiply unchecked. Texas A&M researchers have identified two naturally occurring molecules that appear to help restore those controls, offering a potential new strategy for slowing the progression of lung cancer.
In a recent study , researchers from the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) and the College of Education and Human Development found that microRNA-15a and microRNA-16 — small molecules that help regulate protein production within cells — can significantly reduce the growth and protein synthesis of non-small cell lung cancer cells.
The findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that these microRNAs play an important role in maintaining cellular balance and could someday serve as targets for therapies designed to slow cancer progression.
“These two specific microRNAs have a profound influence on cellular proteostasis, and the disruption of cellular proteostasis in most cancer cells is the reason that they become cancerous,” said Dr. James Fluckey , associate dean for research and a professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Sport Management and the study’s principal investigator. “The fact that we found two mircoRNAs that can influence that proteostasis to slow cancer progression is of profound importance.”
Every cell constantly receives signals telling it when to grow, divide, repair itself or slow down. MicroRNAs help regulate those signals, ensuring cells maintain a healthy balance.
Dr. Peter Nghiem , a VMBS associate professor and co-author on the study, compared microRNAs to traffic lights.
“MicroRNAs regulate the normal flow of traffic,” Nghiem said. “When a traffic light goes down, traffic gets backed up and accidents happen. In the same way, microRNAs help regulate normal cell metabolism and cell growth.”
Cancer often emerges when those regulatory systems fail.
In healthy cells, various molecular mechanisms act as brakes that keep growth under control. When those brakes are lost, cells can become locked into a state of constant growth and rapidly spread.
The researchers found that restoring microRNA-15a and microRNA-16 in lung cancer cells helped reestablish some of those normal controls, reducing both protein production and cell growth.
The study represents the latest chapter in a research journey that began not with cancer but with skeletal muscle.
For years, Fluckey’s laboratory has investigated how muscles communicate with other tissues throughout the body. During that work, researchers became interested in microRNAs — small, non-coding strands of genetic material (those that do not contain instructions for making proteins) once thought to have little biological significance.
As scientists learned more about microRNAs, they discovered that these molecules act as powerful regulators of protein production, helping determine which proteins the cells make and when they make them.
“We used to just throw them away as junk because they didn’t look like they were doing anything in the body,” Fluckey said. “Now, we’re finding that they have a tremendous influence on how cells function.”
Among the thousands of known microRNAs, two consistently captured the researchers’ attention: microRNA-15a and microRNA-16.
Previous studies in Fluckey’s laboratory revealed that these molecules help regulate muscle growth, protein turnover and insulin sensitivity. As the team expanded its research into cancer biology, it began to suspect the same microRNAs might influence tumor growth as well.
While the findings are promising, the researchers emphasize that the study does not represent a cure for lung cancer. Instead, the work suggests a potential strategy for slowing tumor growth and restoring more normal cellular behavior.
“We’re not necessarily touting that we have a cure,” Fluckey said. “We are touting that maybe we can arrest the cancer to an extent that it may behave normally enough to buy you a bunch of time.”
That distinction is important because cancer treatment often involves multiple therapies working together. Slowing the disease could create opportunities for other interventions — such as radiation, surgery or drug treatments — to be more effective.
“Whether you’re talking about cancer, muscular dystrophy or other complex diseases, it’s just too big of a problem to solve with one single treatment,” Nghiem said. “In reality, it’s going to take a multimodal treatment regimen to attack the cancer, slow its progression and then eventually eliminate it.”
For aggressive diseases such as non-small cell lung cancer, even modest gains can have meaningful impacts on patients’ lives.
“If you can buy minutes, hours, months, or even years, we could profoundly impact a person’s well-being,” Fluckey said.
The research team is working toward methods that could deliver microRNA-based therapies directly to cancer cells while avoiding healthy tissue.
One approach involves engineering viral delivery systems capable of carrying therapeutic genetic material to specific cancer cells. The researchers hope future versions of the technology could selectively target lung cancer cells and restore the microRNAs needed to slow tumor growth.
Although additional research is needed before the strategy can be tested clinically, the scientists believe the work highlights the potential of targeting the mechanisms that regulate cellular growth rather than focusing solely on destroying cancer cells.
“The health problems we’re trying to solve are very complex,” Nghiem said. “If they were easy to solve, they would already be solved.”
The project also highlights the value of interdisciplinary collaboration across Texas A&M.
The partnership between Fluckey and Nghiem began years ago when one of Nghiem’s doctoral students took a class taught by Fluckey and recognized similarities in their research interests. That introduction sparked a collaboration that has since produced multiple publications, research grants and new lines of investigation, according to Nghiem.
“We’ve hatched up a number of really fun sets of experiments that are leading to what we’re seeing now,” Fluckey said.
For Nghiem, the collaboration demonstrates the power of working across different disciplines to tackle difficult scientific questions.
As the researchers continue to explore how microRNAs influence cellular growth, they hope their work will contribute to a broader understanding of cancer biology and eventually lead to new therapeutic possibilities.
“The fact that we were able to find a couple microRNAs that seem to have a whole bunch of impact on cellular metabolism across a variety of cells seems pretty important,” Fluckey said. “We need to pursue that a little more.”
By Camryn Haines, Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
FASEB BioAdvances
Experimental study
Cells
MicroRNA 15a and 16 Regulate Proteostasis in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer
2-May-2026
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.