do it or will not it Determining whether a prostate cancer (shown here) will metastasize is delicate ?; Now, researchers have identified a protein that could help
A widely known for wading cancer protein appears to be part of a second line of defense :. It also keeps cancer cells that arise from spreading, according to a new job. The results highlight that goes wrong in allowing cancer metastasis; it can even refer to possible approaches to stop cancer from engaging in the end of mortal part
While many cancers remain in place, some shed cells into the bloodstream. these can be found elsewhere in the body, where they set up camp, producing fatal metastases. Researchers have long known that certain proteins help prevent the early stages of cancer. A failure of one of them, called Raf leads to both cancer and metastasis. The researchers wondered if a protein that stops Raf work, called RKIP (Raf kinase inhibitor protein), could only stop the spread of cancer, but not growth.
Earlier work by molecular biologist Evan Keller, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues have supported this idea. In studies of cancer cells of the cultured mouse prostate, they found that metastatic cells produced less RKIP that cells that do not. The next step was to determine whether RKIP had a role in the spread of prostate cancer in men. The team sought RKIP cancers in men removed within hours of their death. They found RKIP in the normal prostate tissue and reduced amounts of RKIP in breast cancer of the prostate, but they can not detect protein RKIP in cancers that have traveled to other parts of the body.
To verify that the loss of RKIP could cause cancer to metastasize, the researchers took a circuitous route. They RKIP overproduced in cultured cells which had already depicted metastatic ability; if the loss of RKIP helped promote metastasis, they reasoned, too should cause loss of metastatic ability. The intuition proved correct: When the Keller group injected these altered cancer cells into mice, the cancer remained in the prostate. unmodified cells spread to the lungs of mice, they report in the June 17 Journal of the National Cancer Institute .
tumor biologist Danny Welch of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, said the work exposes some of the biochemistry behind the spread of cancer. In addition, RKIP and other proteins that anchor cancer at a site may optionally be targets for gene therapy. "Doctors can cure cancer as long as it does not spread," he said, adding that the therapeutic use are years in the future.
Related Sites
homepage Evan Keller
National Coalition against prostate cancer
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