TRIP13 protein encourages cancer cells to repair -
Imagine you are fighting for your life, but no matter how you hit, your opponent will not go down.
The same can be said of very resistant cancers to treatment, such as head and neck, where during radiotherapy and chemotherapy of cancer cells repair themselves, survive and thrive. Cancer Head and neck is the sixth most frequently occurring cancer worldwide, but the result of the detection and late treatment resistance in a high mortality rate.
Now University Michigan researchers have found that TRIP13 particular protein, encourages cancer cells repairing itself. And they identified an existing chemical that blocks this mechanism for cell repair.
"This is a very important advance, because the identification of the function of the protein that fuels the repair of cancer cells and having an existing chemical that blocks the process could speed up process proceeding to clinical trials, "said lead researcher Nisha to Silva, UM professor of dentistry and associate professor of pathology.
generally if scientists discover a promising therapeutic target for drug, it takes years to develop drug compounds from scratch and move them into clinical trials.
If the DNA of the cell is damaged and the cell can not repair the damage, the cell dies. In cancers of the head and neck, D'Silva and his colleagues have shown that cancer cells that overexpress TRIP13 have enough repair their DNA to survive and continue to grow like cancer.
"Targeting this repair mechanism with specific drugs could increase treatment effectiveness and improve the survival of cancer patients," said Silva of. "And given overexpression TRIP13 in several cancers resistant to treatment, this strategy will probably be important to several cancers. "
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