Researchers at Jefferson Medical College have shown for the first time that the protein, GCC, is present in a condition known as intestinal metaplasia, which may lead to both cancers, and in turn, is also present in those cancers.
The work, led by Stephanie Shulz, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and Jason Park, an M.D./Ph.D. student at Jefferson Medical College, has implications for the development of improved methods of diagnosing and treating both types of cancer.
She reports her team's findings March 26 at the meeting of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics in Atlanta. GCC, or guanylyl cyclase C, is a member of a family of seven proteins expressed only by intestinal cells and colorectal cancer cells. It's vital to cellular communications, transmitting signals from outside to inside the cell. Most sporadic colorectal cancers originate in the cells that line the intestine - cells that normally make GCC. When the cells become cancerous, they continue to make GCC.
Several years ago, Scott Waldman, M.D., Ph.D., Samuel M.V. Hamilton Family Professor of Medicine and director of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, and his co-workers found that GCC allows the detection of cells having spread to other areas of the body. GCC can be used as a diagnostic tool to stage patients and to follow them after their surgery to see if their cancer has returned.
Dr. Schulz and her co-workers had previously shown that Cdx2, a protein involved in the expression of genes in intestinal cells played a role in determining how one of those genes expressed GCC in the intestine. "We wondered, if Cdx2 was present, would it dr
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Contact: Steve Benowitz
steven.benowitz@mail.tju.edu
215-955-5291
Thomas Jefferson University
26-Mar-2002