A little-known mouse protein disrupts cancer-causing chemical changes to genes associated with human colorectal cancer cells and potentially could be used to treat solid tumors, according to a new study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In the study, published Jan. 8 in the journal Nature Communications, the mouse version of the protein, called STELLA, disrupted a key epigenetic factor and impaired tumor growth better than the protein’s human version. By pinpointing the amino acids (building blocks of a protein) responsible for the difference in activity, the research team developed and tested a drug strategy using those amino acids to treat colorectal cancer in cell lines and in a mouse model of cancer. Epigenetics refers to chemical…