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Researchers Discover New Enzyme in Cancer Growth
December 04, 2008While studying the mechanics of blood clots, researchers at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center discovered a new enzyme that not only affects the blood, but seems to play a primary role in how cancer tumors expand and spread throughout the body. The research appeared in recent issues of the journal Blood and the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis.
A research group at OU led by Patrick McKee first discovered the enzyme called sFAP in plasma. After studying the biochemical makeup of the protein and identifying the gene that controlled its function, they began to search gene sequencing databases worldwide to find what it was. They didn't find the enzyme listed for blood, but got a match with a virtually identical protein known to cause cell growth in tissue, including in cancer. With McKee's discovery that the protein also exists in blood, scientists have a new avenue to study the spread of cancer.
"One thing all cancer cells need as they grow is something that acts as scaffolding. They have to attach to the scaffolding to divide and migrate. This enzyme excavates space around a malignancy and helps create the scaffolding," said McKee, M.D., principle investigator on the project.
The main function of the original FAP protein that was known to exist in tissue is to accelerate tissue growth and expand cells during fetal development, the healing of severe wounds and during growth of selected cancers such as breast, lung, pancreatic and colon.
Other than in these situations, the original form of FAP is not normally expressed in tissues at all. When it does appear, the protein helps activated fibroblasts, which growing cancer cells are able to recruit and stimulate to multiply within the malignancy itself. This creates space and the framework on which cancer cells attach, divide and eventually spread.
If FAP could be inhibited, then cancer growth could be slowed or halted, which in combination with chemotherapy or radiation might offer the potential to actually cure the malignancy, the OU team believes.
McKee and his group of investigators hold one patent on the enzyme and three more are under review for the development of an inhibitor. Based on the discovery and numerous publications of their work, the OU Health Sciences Center recently received a $365,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to work on an inhibitor with cancer investigators at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
The main function of the original FAP protein that was known to exist in tissue is to accelerate tissue growth and expand cells during fetal development, the healing of severe wounds and during growth of selected cancers such as breast, lung, pancreatic and colon.
Other than in these situations, the original form of FAP is not normally expressed in tissues at all. When it does appear, the protein helps activated fibroblasts, which growing cancer cells are able to recruit and stimulate to multiply within the malignancy itself. This creates space and the framework on which cancer cells attach, divide and eventually spread.
If FAP could be inhibited, then cancer growth could be slowed or halted, which in combination with chemotherapy or radiation might offer the potential to actually cure the malignancy, the OU team believes.
McKee and his group of investigators hold one patent on the enzyme and three more are under review for the development of an inhibitor. Based on the discovery and numerous publications of their work, the OU Health Sciences Center recently received a $365,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to work on an inhibitor with cancer investigators at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Cancer Growth Current Events and Cancer Growth News RSSResearchers Identify Role of Gene in Tumor Development, Growth and Progression
Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine researchers have identified a gene that may play a pivotal role in two processes that are essential for tumor development, growth and progression to metastasis.
Alternatively spliced tissue factor identified as promising new biomarker for aggressive cancers
A recently discovered form of the protein that triggers blood clotting may play a key role in the molecular mechanisms leading to the growth of certain metastatic cancers, according to new research reported by an international team of scientists.
NEDD9 Protein Supports Growth of Aggressive Breast Cancer
Researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center have demonstrated that a protein called NEDD9 may be required for some of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer to grow. Their findings, based on the study of a mouse model of breast cancer, are presented in a recent issue of Cancer Research, available on-line now.
Mayo Clinic Researchers Find That Protein Believed to Protect Against Cancer Has a Mr. Hyde Side
In a biological rendition of fiction's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, researchers from the Mayo Clinic campus in Florida and Harvard Medical School have found that a protein thought to protect against cancer development can actually spur the spread of tumors.
Researchers examine mechanisms that help cancer cells proliferate
A process that limits the number of times a cell divides works much differently than had been thought, opening the door to potential new anticancer therapies, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center report in the Aug. 7 issue of the journal Cell.
Researchers identify new, cancer-causing role for protein
The mainstay immune system protein TRAF6 plays an unexpected, key role activating a cell signaling molecule that in mutant form is associated with cancer growth, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the Aug. 28 edition of Science.
Toronto researcher's discovery points to a new treatment avenue for acute myeloid leukemia
Dr. John Dick, Senior Scientist at the Ontario Cancer Institute, the research arm of Princess Margaret Hospital, co-led a multinational team that has developed the first leukemia therapy that targets a protein, CD123, on the surface of cancer stem cells that drive acute myeloid leukemia (AML), which is an aggressive disease with a poor outcome.
UAB Researchers Draft 3-D Protein Map
A new three-dimensional computer protein map is helping researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) unravel the biological pathways that control brain-cell death after a stroke.
Gene therapy technique thwarts cancer by cutting off tumor blood supply
University of Florida researchers have come up with a new gene therapy method to disrupt cancer growth by using a synthetic protein to induce blood clotting that cuts off a tumor's blood and nutrient supply.
Carbohydrate restriction may slow prostate tumor growth
Restricting carbohydrates, regardless of weight loss, appears to slow the growth of prostate tumors, according to an animal study being published this week by researchers in the Duke Prostate Center.
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