Enzyme with high potential for new Cancer treatment

A team of researchers from the Biology department at the TU Darmstadt has identified an enzyme that separates DNA replication from repair. This discovery could be of tremendous significance in the treatment of tumors. Biologists at the TU Darmstadt under Prof. Dr. Markus Löbrich and Dr. Julian Spies have collaborated with their colleagues at the University of California in Davis and identified a protein kinase called Nek1 that promotes the repair of DNA double-strand breaks and separates this repair from replication. Nek1 switches on the motor protein Rad54 only after the completion of replication in order to finalize the repair process. This is of physiological relevance because during replication, Rad54 possesses additional functions at the replication fork, and premature activation of Rad54 results in a major disturbance of the replication process. This discovery has a very high potential for use in the development of entirely new kinds of cancer treatments. Finding inhibitors that block the function of Nek1 would lead to a loss in the repair function. Tumor cells in particular would suffer from this loss of function in Nek1, since they experience a tremendous amount of DNA damage during their uncontrolled growth. The scientists suspect that the inhibition of Nek1 could be associated with an accumulation of unrepaired DNA damage in these cells that could cause the tumor cells to die. The team of researchers plans to continue to investigate these assumptions over the coming years.