Mary Zutter and colleagues, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, have generated data that lead them to suggest that decreased expression of the protein alpha-2 integrin is predictive of tumor dissemination to distant sites and decreased survival in individuals with either breast or prostate cancer.
The researchers first studied the role of the protein alpha-2-beta-1 integrin (which is composed of the alpha-2 integrin protein and the beta-1 integrin protein) in cancer initiation and progression using a clinically relevant, spontaneous mouse model of breast cancer progression and metastasis (spread). Their data indicated that alpha-2-beta-1 integrin suppressed metastasis. To investigate whether the data had any immediate clinical applicability, a systematic analysis of microarray databases of human breast and prostate cancer was performed. The results of this analysis showed that decreased expression of the gene responsible for generating alpha-2 integrin was predictive of metastasis and decreased survival, leading to the suggestion that alpha-2 integrin expression could be a useful biomarker of metastatic potential and patient survival.
TITLE: The alpha-2-beta-1 integrin is a metastasis suppressor in mouse models and human cancer
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Mary M. Zutter
Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
Phone: 615.343.1095; Fax: 615.343.7040; E-mail: mary.zutter@vanderbilt.edu .
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/42328?key=a9499338b772b7017720
Journal of Clinical Investigation