The research will be published in the journal Nature and will be available Wednesday, June 28 on the journal's web site.
"Our finding suggests that the same process this protein uses for proliferating cancer could also potentially be used to regrow axons that are damaged in spinal cord injuries or neurological diseases," said Antonio Iavarone, M.D., associate professor of neurology and pathology at Columbia University Medical Center's Institute for Cancer Genetics, and the study's lead author.
The proteins known as Id proteins - are abundant in the cells of many different types of cancer, including brain, breast cancer and pediatric tumors, and were known to promote tumor growth and aid in the spread of cancer.
While searching for ways to attack Id's cancer-causing properties, Dr. Iavarone and Anna Lasorella, M.D. assistant professor of pediatrics and pathology at the Institute for Cancer Genetics, discovered the surprising neuron-healing properties of Id proteins.
Their initial findings, also published in the Nature paper, are significant for potential cancer therapies. The researchers found that an enzyme inside normal cells - called APC usually degrades Id proteins soon after they're produced, but cancerous cells show a very high level of Id proteins. This suggests that re-introducing the APC enzyme into cancer cells could eliminate the proteins and arrest the growth of tumor cells something that researchers will now investigate.
Spurring Neuronal Regrowth
Among neurons, however, Dr. Iavarone and Dr. Lasorella examined the Id protein potential for promoting growth, rather
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Contact: Craig LeMoult
cel2113@columbia.edu
212-920-9652
Columbia University Medical Center
28-Jun-2006