US scientists studying how prostate cancer cells grow say they’ve discovered a new role for a protein previously known to be involved in repairing damaged DNA.
The protein DNA-PK, first shown to repair DNA damage in the 1990s by UK scientists, has now been shown to be involved in regulating the activity of genes involved in cancer spread.
According to study leader Dr Karen Knudsen, from the Sidney Kimmel
Cancer Centre, her team’s results “strongly suggest” that DNA-PK plays
an important role in prostate cancer spread.
“And high levels of DNA-PK could predict which early stage tumours may go on to metastasise (spread)," she added.
Using a variety of laboratory techniques, her team showed that
disrupting DNA-PK’s activity inside growing prostate cancer cells
altered the levels of other key molecules that regulate cell movement,
and slowed down the cancer cells’ ability to spread.
They also found higher levels of the protein in tumour samples taken from men whose prostate cancer went on to spread.
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