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New analysis has revealed unique networks of hundreds of proteins that can lead to the growth of breast, head and neck cancers, according to three studies published today.
Why is this important: Cancers differ in many ways, including their mutations. But, there are some common cell systems involved, including protein networks, that can affect cancer growth and scientists hope to target them with therapies.
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By better understanding protein-protein interaction networks (PPIs) and their role in driving cancer, scientists can dramatically increase the number of potential drug targets.
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“PPIs are essential because they extend well beyond gene lists to define the biochemistry of tumor pathway proteins and drug targets,” said Ran Cheng and Peter Jackson of Stanford University School of Medicine in an article by perspective.
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By creating innovative methods to examine PPI data and cancers, they write, there is a greater chance of achieving “the promise of better personalized medicine identifying the right therapy for each patient.”
The last: The newspaper Science On Thursday, studies were published with an analysis mapping 395 protein systems in 13 types of cancer, focusing on data from studies on squamous cell cancers of the head and neck and breast cancers.
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The three related articles examined how hundreds of mutations in breast and head and neck cancers affect the activity of proteins that lead to disease.
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They also discovered difficult-to-detect mutations in certain proteins that can affect tumor growth as well as certain biomarkers that could be used in clinical sequencing panels.
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For head and neck cancer, they found 771 PPIs, 84% of which had never been reported before. Breast cancer findings include the localization of two proteins that affect the function of the tumor suppressor gene BRCA1 and two proteins that regulate PIK3CA, which have been linked to breast cancer.
What they say : Raghu Kalluri, president of cancer biology at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, told Axios the studies offered “good progress” towards efforts to “identify things that had not previously been identified as vulnerabilities. , for which drugs may be available ”.
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“Looking at how proteins interact with each other, the broadest sense of a network that has formed to control the fate of a cancer cell, will give us new insight into other proteins that may be affected,” says Kalluri , which was not part of these studies.
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However, more validation from other groups and using genetic mouse models is needed, he adds.
And after: Researchers will continue to work on the big question: which mutations in different genes affect protein interactions that lead to cancer growth, Marcus Kelly, postdoctoral researcher and co-author of one of the papers, told Axios.
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“We are looking at these protein systems at several scales. Some of these protein systems are kinds of little clumps of proteins that always stick together, and some are these signaling pathways that involve a bunch of different proteins passing information to each other. ,” he says.
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“It is important to test these different scales because mutations can also affect processes at different scales,” says Kelly.
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See their interactive protein systems map here.
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