How Inhibiting One Protein Could Help To Treat Pancreatic Cancer

Posted 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.

  • Focus of the study: The study focuses on an integral element of cancer research, which is epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, a sort of identity change that cancer cells undergo as the disease progresses.
  • Epithelial-mesenchymal spectrum: A key characteristic of mesenchymal tumor cells is that unlike their epithelial counterparts, they are much more resistant to cancer drugs. Researchers refer to this process as movement along an epithelial-mesenchymal spectrum: as cancer progresses, the cancer cells move farther away from the epithelial end and toward the mesenchymal end.

            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.

  • Pancreatic cancer now has drug resistance: Pancreatic cancer begins in cells of the pancreas, an organ that lies behind the stomach and is important for digestion and controlling blood sugar. It is among the 10 cancers most common in both men and women.
  • SUV420H2 shows promise: As part of their study, Genentech team screened 300 known epigenetic regulators to see which of them could regulate movement along the epithelial-mesenchymal spectrum.The one that proved most effective was a "histone-modifying protein called SUV420H2."

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!


Hollie Williams

About the Author

Hollie Williams
Joined: December 24th, 2017
Articles Posted: 25

More by this author