Preventing the cell’s protein factories from making the notorious cancer-causing protein MYC could stop out-of-control tumors.
For decades, scientists have tried to stop cancer by disabling the mutated proteins that are found in tumors. But many cancers manage to overcome this and continue growing.
Now, UCSF scientists think they can throw a wrench into the fabrication of a key growth-related protein, MYC, that escalates wildly in 70% of all cancers. Unlike some other targets of cancer therapies, MYC can be dangerous simply due to its abundance.
In a paper that appears Feb. 4 in Nature Cell Biology, researchers at UC San Francisco describe how to curb MYC levels. They discovered that another protein, called RBM42, makes cells churn out MYC.
Disrupting RBM42 in pancreatic cancer cells, one of the…