Regulation by proteins outside cancer cells points to potential new drug target

Vision is to reprogram cancer cells to state of permanent dormancy

2012-07-10

(Press-News.org) SAN ANTONIO (July 9, 2012) – Protein interactions outside breast cancer cells can send signals to the cancer cells to permanently stop proliferating, a new study showed in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio.

"Because this protein cascade is outside the cells, it is likely amenable to therapeutic manipulation," said lead author Yuzuru Shiio, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry at the university's Greehey Children's Cancer Research Institute. "I hope our study will ultimately lead to a therapeutic strategy to reprogram cancer cells to a state of permanent dormancy."

He cautions that the finding was observed in cell cultures and is still far from human cancer therapy. Dr. Shiio is also a member of the Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) at the UT Health Science Center, a National Cancer Institute Designated Cancer Center.

Senescence is poorly understood

Upon successful chemotherapy, cancer cells either die or permanently stop proliferation. The latter phenomenon is called senescence and is poorly understood, Dr. Shiio said.

Using cultured breast cancer cells as a model, the team found that upon chemotherapeutic drug treatment these cells released factors that stop proliferation. By analyzing which proteins are released under this stress, the team discovered that a protein called IGFBP3 (insulin-like growth factor binding protein 3) is a key player in cancer senescence. The team then studied other proteins that work together with IGFBP3 outside of the cancer cells.

Needle in a haystack

Using powerful, large-scale analysis called proteomics, the researchers literally picked out the increased abundance of this one protein, IGFBP3, among a thousand other proteins outside of the cells. It was like finding a proverbial needle in a haystack.

### National Institutes of Health grants AG029587, CA125020 and CA137568 to Dr. Shiio and an institutional grant, CA054174 (Cancer Therapy & Research Center at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio - Mass Spectrometry Shared Resource and Pathology Core Laboratory), supported this research in part.

On the Web and Twitter

For current news from the UT Health Science Center, please visit our news release website or follow us on Twitter @uthscsa.

About the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio The Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is one of the elite academic cancer centers in the country to be named a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Designated Cancer Center, and is one of only four in Texas. A leader in developing new drugs to treat cancer, the CTRC Institute for Drug Development (IDD) conducts one of the largest oncology Phase I clinical drug programs in the world, and participates in development of cancer drugs approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. For more information, visit www.ctrc.net.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Iron supplements can reduce fatigue in nonanemic women

2012-07-10

Iron supplementation reduced fatigue by almost 50% in women who are low in iron but not anemic, according to the results of a clinical trial published July 9 in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). "We found that iron supplementation for 12 weeks decreased fatigue by almost 50% from baseline, a significant difference of 19% compared with placebo, in menstruating iron-deficient nonanemic women with unexplained fatigue and ferritin levels below 50 μg/L," writes Dr. Bernard Favrat, Department of Ambulatory Care and Community Medicine, University of Lausanne, ...

Tiny bubbles snap carbon nanotubes like twigs

2012-07-10

HOUSTON – (July 9, 2012) -- What's 100 times stronger than steel, weighs one-sixth as much and can be snapped like a twig by a tiny air bubble? The answer is a carbon nanotube -- and a new study by Rice University scientists details exactly how the much-studied nanomaterials snap when subjected to ultrasonic vibrations in a liquid. "We find that the old saying 'I will break but not bend' does not hold at the micro- and nanoscale," said Rice engineering researcher Matteo Pasquali, the lead scientist on the study, which appears this month in the Proceedings of the National ...

University of Miami-led study finds winds played important role in keeping oil away from S. Fla.

2012-07-10

MIAMI – July 9, 21012 -- The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in spring 2010 is the largest oil spill in the history of the United States, with more than 200 million gallons of crude oil released at about 1,500 m. depth off the Mississippi Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time of the accident, the proximity of the intense Loop Current, flowing from the Yucatan Channel to the Florida Straits, raised major concerns that the oil at the surface of the ocean would be headed toward the South Florida and East Atlantic coastal areas. However, the dominant transport of oil and oil ...

Lax gun ownership laws could impact ability of high-risk individuals to purchase firearms

2012-07-10

Sixty percent of persons incarcerated for gun crimes in the thirteen U.S. states with the most lax standards for legal firearm ownership were not legally prohibited from possessing firearms when they committed the crime that led to their incarceration. According to the study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 31 percent of these gun offenders were old enough to possess a firearm and had no prior disqualifying record. But 29 percent had criminal records or would have been too young to legally possess a firearm in states with the strictest ...

Turning off key piece of genetic coding eliminates toxic effect of statins, SLU research finds

2012-07-10

ST. LOUIS -- In research funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association and published in EMBO Molecular Medicine, Saint Louis University investigator Ángel Baldán, Ph.D., found that the microRNA miR-33 plays a key role in regulating bile metabolism. Further, the research suggests that, in an animal model, the manipulation of this microRNA can improve the liver toxicity that can be caused by statins. "As we learn more about the way cholesterol is moved and metabolized through the body, we have more tools at our disposal to try to limit ...

Technique spots disease using immune cell DNA

2012-07-10

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When a person is sick, there is a tell-tale sign in their blood: a different mix of the various types of immune cells called leukocytes. A group of scientists at several institutions including Brown University has discovered a way to determine that mix from the DNA in archival or fresh blood samples, potentially providing a practical new technology not only for medical research but also for clinical diagnosis and treatment monitoring of ailments including some cancers. The key to the new technique, described in two recent papers, ...

EARTH: Karakoram glaciers buck global, regional trends

2012-07-10

Alexandria, VA – Resting in the Karakoram Range between northern Pakistan and western China, the Karakoram glaciers are stumping scientists. Unlike most mountain glaciers, the Karakoram glaciers, which account for 3 percent of the total ice-covered area in the world, excluding Greenland and Antarctica, are not shrinking. On the contrary, a team of French glaciologists has recently confirmed that these glaciers on average have remained stable or may have even grown slightly in recent years. Although all glacial regions evolve in unique ways, why are these glaciers bucking ...

Study shows Islamist extremists emphasize self-defense, not world domination

2012-07-10

A common belief in the West is that al Qaeda wishes to impose Islam everywhere. This might be a pipe dream for the group, but a new study of their use of religious texts suggests that Islamists' goals are much more modest. Researchers with Arizona State University's Center for Strategic Communication (CSC) analyzed more than 2,000 items of propaganda from al Qaeda and related Islamist groups from 1998 to 2011. They catalogued more than 1,500 quotes from the Qur'an that extremists used to support their arguments, and identified the chapter (surah) and verse represented ...

Recession's bite: Nearly 4 million Californians struggled to put food on table during downturn

2012-07-10

An estimated 3.8 million California adults — particularly those in households with children, as well as low-income Latinos — could not afford to put adequate food on the table during the recent recession, according to a new policy brief by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. In 2009, about one in six low-income Californians had "very low food security," which describes multiple instances in which people had to cut their food intake and experienced hunger, according to the study, which is based on data from the California Health Interview Survey. This is double ...

Cell differentiation as a novel strategy for the treatment of an aggressive type of skin cancer

2012-07-10

Skin squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is a subtype of very aggressive skin cancers that usually develops in sunexposed body regions, but can also affect a large number of organs such as the bladder, esophagus, lungs etc. However, little is known about the biology of these cells, which consequently makes difficult the generation of new specific therapies; actually, the standard treatments are based on surgery and subsequent radiotherapy. Researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) led by Erwin Wagner, vice-director of Basic Research and director of BBVA ...

One of the largest studies on preterm birth finds a maternal biomarker test significantly reduces neonatal morbidities and improves neonatal outcomes

One of the largest studies of its kind finds early intervention with iron delivered intravenously during pregnancy is a safe and effective treatment for anemia

Regulation by proteins outside cancer cells points to potential new drug target

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: