Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Cell 'glue' provides cancer insight
| THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND |
The researchers have discovered the signals that prompt proteins to build the 'glue' that binds cells together to form healthy tissues - a process that is interrupted in certain diseases.
Image: BeholdingEye/iStockphoto
University of Queensland researchers have discovered an important step in how proteins glue cells together to form healthy tissues, a process that is often disturbed in diseases such as cancer and inflammation.
Professor Alpha Yap, Dr Aparna Ratheesh and Dr Guillermo Gomez from UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) led a team that discovered the signals that prompt proteins to build the "glue" that binds cells into tissues. “Cells are the basic building blocks of our body,” Professor Yap said. “Healthy tissues require their component cells to recognise and adhere to one another. “This adhesion is achieved through specialised bundles of proteins whose formation is promoted by a signalling protein called Rho. "You can think of this signal like the conductor of an orchestra, making sure that all the players work together.” Professor Yap and his team studied Rho and discovered a network of proteins that ensure Rho is activated at the correct time. “Many of the proteins in this network have been implicated in cancer, meaning this discovery will provide valuable insights into how healthy tissues are disturbed in disease,” Professor Yap said. It follows the Yap laboratory's 2010 and 2011 discoveries of how adhesion proteins come unstuck inappropriately. The study is published in the current edition of the international scientific journal Nature Cell Biology. This work was financially supported by the Human Frontiers Science Program, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the Australian Research Council, and the Oncology Children's Foundation. Confocal microscopy was performed at the IMB's ACRF Cancer Biology Imaging Facility, established with the generous support of the Australian Cancer Research Foundation.
Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.
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Stem cells aid cancer understanding
| THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE |
By being able to identify these stem cells the researchers are hoping to learn more about the role they play in tissue regeneration and cancer.
Image: Henrik5000/iStockphoto
An international team of researchers led by renowned stem cell scientist Professor Martin Pera has discovered a novel marker that plays a vital role in understanding how cancer develops in the liver, pancreas and oesophagus.
The study, published in the journal Stem Cell, adds to our understanding of the role of stem and next-stage progenitor cells in tissue regeneration and cancer diagnosis and treatment. While stem cells are known to reside in organs such as the liver and pancreas, they are difficult to isolate. The new findings show that an antibody the team developed can capture the stem cells. Professor Pera, program leader for Stem Cells Australia and Chair of Stem Cell Sciences at the University of Melbourne, said the antibody was able to detect progenitor cells in disease states such as cirrhosis of the liver, and in cancers such as pancreatic adenocarcinoma and oesophageal carcinoma. “By being able to identify these cells, we hope to learn more about their role in tissue regeneration and in cancer especially in the diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer,” he said. “Cancers of the liver, pancreas and oesophagus are often very difficult to detect and challenging to treat.” The large collaboration of scientists from around the world working on this study evolved over many years with research undertaken in Professor Pera’s laboratories at the then Australian Stem Cell Centre and at the University of Southern California Professor Pera and one of the co-authors on the paper, Dr Kouichi Hasegawa, were recently awarded an Australia-India Strategic Research Fund grant to continue their search for novel markers for liver, pancreatic and gut stem cells. Dr Hasegawa, who recently undertook a three month sabbatical at Stem Cells Australia, holds positions at Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Materials Sciences and at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India. “This funding will support us to develop more antibodies that can be used to assist in the identification and prospective isolation of stem and progenitor cells in these tissues and lead to the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic reagents,” said Professor Pera.
Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.
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