In the quest to understand how cancer develops and is spread, scientists have been searching for the gene, genes, or signaling pathways whose inappropriate expression or mutation results in disease. In a paper published in the new open access journal from Nature, Scientific Reports, Takahashi et. al. have identified a potential initiator of cancer.
They found that a protein called CGI-01 was overexpressed in many cancerous tissues, but faintly expressed, if at all, in normal tissues. This protein, which they renamed FEAT for Faintly Expressed in normal tissues, Aberrant overexpression in Tumors, appears to be turned on in early stages of pre-cancerous lesions or cancer itself. When expressed, FEAT protein inhibits cell death mechanisms, or apoptosis, leading to increased and uncontrolled cell growth. Mice expressing heaps of FEAT protein spontaneously develop either hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a form of liver cancer, or lymphoma, a blood cancer. More in depth analysis investigating how FEAT actually promotes cancer revealed that FEAT overexpression results in activation of cell signaling cascades, both tyrosine kinase and hedgehog signaling pathways, that have previously been implicated in cancer promotion. May this be a way to detect early stages of cancer development? If this data holds true, it could be a promising detection tool.
Atsushi Takahashi et al, Scientific Reports 1: 15.
http://www.nature.com/srep/index.html
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