Pancreatic cancer kills 50,000 people each year, according to the National Cancer Institute , and there are few effective treatment options for the disease. In a new study, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have discovered that an enzyme called MICAL2 promotes tumor growth and spread in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (PDAC), the most common form of pancreatic cancer. The study will be published on January 2, 2025 in Cancer Research , a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Normally, MICAL2 plays an important role in cell migration and morphology. But when the researchers measured gene expression in PDAC tumor cells, they found that an excessive amount of the enzyme was being produced compared with non-diseased cells — the first time MICAL2 has been experimentally linked to pancreatic cancer.
They also found that:
The findings suggest that MICAL2 could be a promising target for PDAC drug therapies, according to senior author Andrew Lowy, M.D., professor and division chief of surgical oncology at UC San Diego School of Medicine and associate clinical director for surgery at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center.
“Pancreatic cancer has the highest mortality rate of any common cancer and thus current treatments are woefully inadequate,” said Lowy. “We believe it will be possible to target MICAL2 with drugs as it is an enzyme in a class of proteins against which inhibiting drugs have been successfully made to treat other human diseases. We are now working to identify candidate drugs to begin the journey toward blocking MICAL2 function in pancreatic cancer.”
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Cancer Research
The authors report no conflict of interest