Protein suppresses growth of prostate cancer
Published: November 21, 2005
But Yeh also discovered that TAP by itself suppresses prostate cancer cell growth. A cell can send messages from its surface to the nucleus through a set of chemical reactions known as a signaling pathway. Yeh and her team identified a specific pathway disrupted by TAP. The disruption by TAP suppresses cancer cell growth.
The pathway involves two proteins, phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase and constitutively active Akt.
” The pathway is very active in cancer, giving the cells a growth and survival advantage” Yeh said. ” This pathway is not the only factor in prostate cancer, but it is an important one.”
The Rochester researchers reintroduced TAP into the prostate cancer cells in the laboratory. They also injected mice with cancer cells and cancer cells with restored TAP.
” Reintroducing TAP expression in prostate cancer cells may have a therapeutic effect,” Yeh said. ” Proliferation of the cancer was reduced in cells with the reintroduced TAP. In mice with restored TAP, there was significantly reduced incidence of tumors and reduced size of tumors.”
In addition to investigating which substances boost the expression of TAP, Yeh and the research group now are focusing on why, in prostate cancer, cells lose the capacity to express TAP.
” This research has great promise,” Messing said. ” Why is TAP expression low in cancer cells ? Is it one of the things that drives cells to become malignant ? If TAP expression is important, we might be able to interfere and restore TAP expression and affect the progress of the cancer.”
Yeh’s research has focused on prostate cancer for several years. In an article in 2002 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ), Yeh and her research team showed that vitamin E interferes with two proteins that play a central role in the development of prostate cancer.
The researchers found then that vitamin E disrupts the ability of prostate cancer cells to make both prostate-specific antigen ( PSA ) and the androgen receptor, a key player in the development and progression of the disease.
Source: University of Rochester Medical Center, 2005
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