Cancer cell: discover the fatal weakness of glioma!

March 3, 2019 / Biovalley / researchers from the Cancer Research Institute of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) found that inhibiting the activity of a specific protein in glioma can increase the sensitivity of glioma to radiotherapy, so as to improve the treatment of glioma, the most common and malignant brain cancer Relevant research results were recently published in cancer Cell Source: cancer cell glioma is very difficult to treat, with a median survival of only 15-16 months Radiotherapy and chemotherapy are the standard treatment methods, both aiming to damage and destroy the DNA of tumor cells, but their therapeutic effect will decline with the resistance of tumor In this new study, Frank B Furnari, Professor of Pathology, College of medicine, UCSD (corresponding author), Dr Jianhui Ma, postdoctoral researcher (first author), and his colleagues found a new mechanism for glioma to promote resistance to treatment: phosphorylation of homologous phosphatase and tensin homology (PTEN), which is encoded by PTEN gene Usually, the protein is a tumor suppressor protein, but mutation or wrong modification will have the opposite effect In particular, the researchers found that PTEN phosphorylation (tyrosine y240 site) can promote DNA repair of tumor cells, thus reversing the effect of therapeutic radiotherapy When the researchers used fibroblast growth factor receptor inhibitors to inhibit the phosphorylation of y240 in mouse glioma cells, the sensitivity of tumor cells to radiotherapy increased, more tumor cells died, so the survival period of mice significantly prolonged "These findings are interesting, provide a basis for clinical trials, and help us explore new therapies for other tumors that use this mechanism to escape treatment." Furnari said This study is also an extension of another study published by the team in nature communications in 2017, which found PTEN can regulate the development of glioma Reference: Frank B Furnari et al Initiation of nuclear PTEN tyrosine phosphorylation enhancements glorioma radiation sensitivity through attended DNA repair Cancer cell (2019) Doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2019.01.020