How Inhibiting One Protein Could Help To Treat Pancreatic CancerPosted by Hollie Williams on January 30th, 2018 New research from Genentech, a biotechnology company in South San Francisco, CA, published in the Journal of Cell Biology, reveals that targeting an enzyme that makes pancreatic cancer cells more aggressive by silencing some of their genes, could make the disease more easily treatable.
Ira Mellman — Genentech's vice president of cancer immunology — and others from the Roche subsidiary found a way to push mesenchymal pancreatic cancer cells back toward the epithelial end of the spectrum on a molecular and functional level, with the help of laboratory grown cells.
It caused laboratory-grown mesenchymal pancreatic cells to regain many of the properties of epithelial cells.By contrast, when they increased levels of SUV420H2 in the epithelial-like cells, the team found that they became more mesenchymal-like. This is indeed a breakthrough to treat pancreatic cancer as drugs that target SUV420H2 to encourage the epithelial state might help to decrease resistance and make conventional chemotherapies more effective in the fight against this deadly disease. About Author The Sandler-Kenner Foundation was started by Gregory A. Echt, M.D. and his wife, Susan T. Echt, after they lost two of their dear friends, Michael and Peter, to premature deaths from pancreatic cancer. Like it? Share it!More by this author |