A study published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry reveals that certain cancer cells are particularly sensitive to p21, a protein that typically forces normal and cancer cells to stop dividing, which recently displayed its ability to kill cancer cells in some cases. Although the finding represents a new advance in targeting and destroying certain cancer cells, scientists need to gain more insight into the exact process of how p21 operates.
Salvador Macip, from the University of Leicester (UK), Department of Biochemistry, stated:
“If we could harness this ‘killing power’ that p21 has, we could think of designing new therapies aimed at increasing its levels in tumors. This is what motivated us to look into it”.
The international team from the universities of Leicester and Cardiff in the UK, the University of South Carolina in the USA, and of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, established that sarcoma cells are likely to die in response to p21. This can be determined by the sensitivity of their mitochondria to oxidants.
Dr Macip explains:
“Our research also showed that p21 can kill cells even in the absence of p53, a protein that is in the main responsible for cell death but is inactivated in most cancers. This shows that certain types of cancer, sarcomas for instance, but maybe also others, should respond well to drugs that increase the levels of p21, even if they don’t have an active p53.
The side effects of these therapies should be minimal, since our experiments show that normal cells would arrest but not die in response to p21.
There are already drugs available that selectively increase p21. Our results provide a rationale for testing them in certain types of cancers, which could be identified using the experiments we describe.”
Written by Petra Rattue