A protein abundant in embryonic stem cells is now shown to be important in cancer, and offers a possible new target for drug development, report researchers from the Stem Cell Program at Children's Hospital Boston.
Last year, George Daley, MD, PhD, and graduate student Srinivas Viswanathan, in collaboration with Richard Gregory, PhD, also of the Stem Cell Program at Children's, showed that the protein LIN28 regulates an important group of tumor-suppressing microRNAs known as let-7. Increasing LIN28 production in a cell prevented let-7 from maturing, making the cell more immature and stem-like. Since these qualities also make a cell more cancerous, and because low levels of mature let-7 have been associated with breast and lung cancer, the discovery suggested that LIN28 might be oncogenic.
Now, publishing Advance Online in Nature Genetics on May 31, Daley, Viswanathan and colleagues show directly that LIN28 can transform cells to a cancerous state, and that it is abundant in a variety of advanced human cancers, particularly liver cancer, ovarian cancer, chronic myeloid leukemia, germ cell tumors and Wilm's tumor (a childhood kidney cancer). They believe that overall, LIN28 and a related protein, LIN28B, may be involved in some 15 percent of human cancers. By blocking or suppressing LIN28, it might be possible to revive the let-7 family's natural tumor-suppressing action.