Researchers discover the secret to brain cancer’s \”immortality\”
UC San Francisco researchers have discovered how a mutation in a gene regulator called the TERT promoter–the third most common mutation among all human cancers and the most common mutation in the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma–confers \”immortality\” on tumor cells, enabling the unchecked cell division that powers their aggressive growth.
Researchers found that glioblastoma cancer cells derived from patients with mutations in the TERT promoter depended on a specific form of the protein GABP to survive. The study was published in Cancer Cell on September 10, 2018. The protein GABP is essential to most cells. However, the researchers found that the component of GABP that activates mutant TERT promoters in cells called GABP ss1L appears to be unnecessary in normal cells.
These findings suggest that ss1L is a promising drug target for aggressive glioblastoma, and possibly the many other cancers containing TERT promoter mutations, said Joseph Costello, Ph.D. a leading UCSF researcher in neuro-oncology.
Source:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-09-secret-deadly-brain-cancer-immortality.html
