RalA and RalB are nasty proteins whose mere presence seems to generate massive amounts of cellular trouble leading to aggressive versions of prostate, bladder and skin cancer, University of Colorado Cancer Center researchers have found.
Before you say this research rings a bell, the two proteins might actually sound familiar. As the scientists themselves note in a release regarding their finding, when both proteins are there, cancer cells in petri dishes evolve toward more aggressive varieties of the disease. But we haven't known why until now.
For the new research, the scientists determined that the presence of both proteins sets in motion a number of genetic and gene expression transformations that, in turn, may be driving the aggressive cancer evolutions. They looked at bladder, prostate and the squamous cell carcinoma skin cancer, and figured out that gene panels affected by both proteins in these cancers easily predicted both the stage of the cancer and survival prospects.
"It wasn't the presence of these proteins per se that predicted aggressive cancer characteristics, it was the signature of other genes changed by RAL activity in the cells that predicted poor outcomes," senior author Dan Theodorescu, director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center, said in a statement.
The research may seem incremental, and more tests are needed in animals and people and in other cancers with the same proteins, such as leukemia, lung and colon cancers. But if truly removing RalA and RalB from cancer cells can stop them from evolving into tougher, more deadly cancers, then both may in fact serve as an ideal target for cancer treatments. For more details, read the journal Cancer Research.
- here's the release
- read the journal abstract