Friday 30 November 2012

COUP-TFII sparks prostate cancer progression

Prostate cancer presents a dilemma for patients and the physicians who treat them. Which cancers are essentially indolent and present no risk and which are life threatening? Which can be watched and which need aggressive treatment? Drs. Ming-Jer and Sophia Tsai, both professors in the department of molecular and cellular biology at Baylor College of Medicine, think a receptor called COUP-TFII that they have long studied may point the way to an answer. In a study that appears online in the journal Nature, they show that high levels (overexpression) of COUP-TFII can overcome a natural barrier to progression of prostate cancer, allowing tumor cells to grow and spread throughout the body. Read more here.

Study mentioned: Qin J, et al. COUP-TFII inhibits TGF-β-induced growth barrier to promote prostate tumorigenesis. Nature. Published online 28 November 2012.

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