PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

U-M researchers find protein that may signal more aggressive prostate cancers

2015-04-13
(Press-News.org) ANN ARBOR--University of Michigan researchers have discovered a biomarker that may be a potentially important breakthrough in diagnosing and treating prostate cancer.

Biomarkers in the body are analogous to the warning lights in cars that signal something might need repairing. In our bodies, they indicate if something's wrong or if we're about to get sick or if we're predisposed to certain illnesses.

"(In the context of prostate cancer) there's a big interest in trying to find biomarkers to discriminate between aggressive and nonaggressive disease," said Renny Franceschi, U-M professor of dentistry, biological chemistry and biomedical engineering.

Franceschi and colleagues recently discovered a biomarker that they believe achieves this differentiation. Prostate cancer can grow so slowly the carrier dies of natural causes before the cancer spreads, but the deadly form progresses very rapidly.

"If this biomarker does indeed control the growth of prostate cells, it's a new signal that's not been seen before and could provide a potential new drug target for prostate cancer," Franceschi said. "It could also be a potential biomarker to discriminate between fast and slow growing tumors."

The U-M researchers made the discovery in a roundabout way, said Franceschi, whose research lab mainly studies bone formation, not cancer.

"We discovered this regulatory mechanism in bone cells, but subsequently found it was also operative in prostate cancer cells," he said. "This is the first paper the lab has published on cancer."

The idea is that adding a phosphate group, a process called phosphorylation, to the protein Runx2, changes its structure to activate specific genes in both bone and prostate cancer cells--but with vastly different results. Bone cells need Runx2 and the newly roused genes to make healthy bone. However, in prostate cancer cells, Runx2 triggered genes that fuel tumor growth and metastasis.

"It's unusual that a protein whose function is to produce bone has this unusual function in prostate cancer," Franceschi said.

To test this, researchers inhibited the ability of Runx2 to be phosphorylated in cancer cells and found that tumor growth was reduced. Franceschi's lab also collaborated with researchers in Italy to analyze tissue samples from 129 patients with prostate cancer.

They found little or no Runx2 phosphorylation in normal prostate, benign prostate or prostatitis, which suggests that Runx2 phosphorylation is closely associated with the more aggressive forms of prostate cancer.

The next step is to establish an actual cause-effect relationship between Runx2 phosphorylation and prostate cancer. To do this they will compare prostate cancer formation in normal mice and mice lacking Runx2 in their prostates.

Worldwide, prostate cancer is the second-most common cancer in men, according to the World Cancer Research Fund International. In the U.S., about 221,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in 2015, resulting in roughly 27,500 deaths.

INFORMATION:

Research colleagues include Chunxi Ge and Guisheng Zhao of the U-M School of Dentistry and researchers from the U-M Medical School, the University of Foggia in Italy and Centro di Riferimento Oncologico Della Basilicata Rionero in Italy.

The paper, "Role of Runx2 Phosphorylation in Prostate Cancer and Association with Aggressive Disease," is scheduled to appear online April 13 in Oncogene.



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

An exoplanet with an infernal atmosphere

2015-04-13
As part of the PlanetS National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR), astronomers from the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE) and Bern, Switzerland, have come to measure the temperature of the atmosphere of an exoplanet with unequalled precision, by crossing two approaches. The first approach is based on the HARPS spectrometer and the second consists of a new way of interpreting sodium lines. From these two additional analyses, researchers have been able to conclude that the HD189733b exoplanet is showing infernal atmospheric conditions: wind speeds of more than 1000 kilometres ...

HPV vaccination of adolescent boys may be cost-effective for preventing oropharyngeal cancer

2015-04-13
A new study indicates that vaccinating 12-year-old boys against the humanpapilloma virus (HPV) may be a cost-effective strategy for preventing oropharyngeal squamous cell cancer, a cancer that starts at the back of the throat and mouth, and involves the tonsils and base of the tongue. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study provides important information about HPV vaccination, which has proven effective against HPV-related disease in both sexes but remains controversial, especially in males. Many western countries ...

Brazilian study suggests adjustments on the treatment of cancer patients with pneumonia

2015-04-13
This news release is available in Portuguese. Cancer patients are more likely to get infections. Pneumonia is the most frequent type of infection in this group and a frequent cause of ICU admission and mortality. A study conducted by researchers from the D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR) in partnership with Brazilian hospitals and universities analyzed the factors associated with severe pneumonia in hospitalized cancer patients and suggests that more personalized treatment protocols can reduce mortality in these patients. Until now, there was a consensus ...

Telomeres and cancer mortality: The long and the short of it

2015-04-10
Telomeres are short stretches of repeated nucleotides that protect the ends of chromosomes. In somatic cells, these protective sequences become shorter with each cellular replication until a critical length is reached, which can trigger cell death. In actively replicating cells such as germ cells, embryonic stem cells, and blood stem cells of the bone marrow, the enzyme telomerase replenishes these protective caps to ensure adequate replication. Cancer cells also seem to have the ability to activate telomerase, which allows them to keep dividing indefinitely, with ...

Can humans get norovirus from their dogs?

2015-04-10
Washington, D.C. - April 10, 2015 - Human norovirus may infect our canine companions, according to research published online April 1 in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. That raises the possibility of dog-to-human transmission, said first author Sarah Caddy, VetMB, PhD, MRCVS, a veterinarian and PhD student at the University of Cambridge, and Imperial College, London, UK. Norovirus is the leading cause of food-borne illness in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). ...

ACA provision for young adults leaves racial disparities intact among trauma patients

2015-04-10
CHICAGO (April 9, 2015): The Affordable Care Act (ACA) allowed millions of young adults to retain health care coverage through their parents' insurance plans, but new research finds that many young African-American and Hispanic adults who need coverage for trauma care may not get it. The results of the study are published online as an "article in press" in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons and will appear in a print edition later this year. Before the dependent care provision of the Affordable Care Act became law in September 2010, approximately 30 percent ...

Accelerating universe? Not so fast

Accelerating universe? Not so fast
2015-04-10
Certain types of supernovae, or exploding stars, are more diverse than previously thought, a University of Arizona-led team of astronomers has discovered. The results, reported in two papers published in the Astrophysical Journal, have implications for big cosmological questions, such as how fast the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang. Most importantly, the findings hint at the possibility that the acceleration of the expansion of the universe might not be quite as fast as textbooks say. The team, led by UA astronomer Peter A. Milne, discovered that type ...

The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology: Being underweight in middle age associated with increased dementia risk

2015-04-10
Middle-aged people who are underweight (with a Body Mass Index [BMI] less than 20 kg/m2 [1]) are a third more likely to develop dementia than people of similar age with a healthy BMI, according to new research published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal. The findings, which come from the largest ever study to examine the statistical association between BMI and dementia risk, also show that middle-aged obese people (BMI greater than 30 kg/m2) are nearly 30% less likely to develop dementia than people of a healthy weight, contradicting findings from some previous ...

A mother's genes can influence the bacteria in her baby's gut

2015-04-10
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Researchers at UC Davis have found that a gene, which is not active in some mothers, produces a breast milk sugar that influences the development of the community of gut bacteria in her infant. The sugars produced by these mothers, called "secretors," are not digested by the infant, but instead nourish specific bacteria that colonize the babies' guts soon after birth. Mothers known as "non-secretors" have a non-functional fucosyltransferase 2 (FUT2) gene, which alters the composition of their breast milk sugars and changes how the microbial community, ...

Choice of protein and carbohydrate-rich foods may have big effects on long-term weight gain

2015-04-10
BOSTON (April 9, 2015)- Making small, consistent changes to the types of protein- and carbohydrate-rich foods we eat may have a big impact on long-term weight gain, according to a new study led by researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University. The results were published on-line this week in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Based on more than 16 years of follow-up among 120,000 men and women from three long-term studies of U.S. health professionals, the authors first found that diets with a high glycemic load (GL) from ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

New generation of Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs) shows unprecedented promise in early-stage disease

Sylvester Cancer Tip Sheet for October 2025

Three science and technology leaders elected to Hertz Foundation Board of Directors

Jump Trading CSO Kevin Bowers elected to Hertz Foundation Board of Directors

Former Inscripta CEO Sri Kosaraju elected to Hertz Foundation Board of Directors

Citadel’s Jordan Chetty elected to Hertz Foundation Board of Directors

McGill research flags Montreal snow dump, inactive landfills as major methane polluters

A lightweight and rapid bidirectional search algorithm

Eighty-five years of big tree history available in one place for the first time

MIT invents human brain model with six major cell types to enable personalized disease research, drug discovery

Health and economic air quality co-benefits of stringent climate policies

How immune cells deliver their deadly cargo

How the brain becomes a better listener: How focus enhances sound processing

Processed fats found in margarines unlikely to affect heart health

Scientists discover how leukemia cells evade treatment

Sandra Shi MD, MPH, named 2025 STAT Wunderkind

Treating liver disease with microscopic nanoparticles

Chemicals might be hitching a ride on nanoplastics to enter your skin

Pregnant patients with preexisting high cholesterol may have elevated CV risk

UC stroke experts discuss current and future use of AI tools in research and treatment

The Southern Ocean’s low-salinity water locked away CO2 for decades, but...

OHSU researchers develop functional eggs from human skin cells

Most users cannot identify AI bias, even in training data

Hurricane outages: Analysis details the where, and who, of increased future power cuts

Craters on surface of melanoma cells found to serve as sites for tumor killing

Research Spotlight: Mapping overlooked challenges in stroke recovery

Geographic and temporal patterns of screening for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer in the US

Cannabis laws and opioid use among commercially insured patients with cancer diagnoses

Research Spotlight: Surprising gene mutation in brain’s immune cells linked to increased Alzheimer’s risk

Missing molecule may explain Down syndrome

[Press-News.org] U-M researchers find protein that may signal more aggressive prostate cancers