Researchers zero in on few proteins as cancer drug targetSAN FRANCISCO – Researchers with University of California, Berkeley, have found a promising new drug target within the pathway that controls the production of a cancer cell’s thousands of proteins and it appears to control production of only a few percent of the proteins critical to regulating the growth and proliferation of cells. A drug blocking this binding protein could shut off translation of only the growth-promoting proteins and not other life-critical proteins inside the cell. Until now, this initiation protein was thought to be eukaryotic initiation factor 4E, or eIF4E. Before, that protein was thought to be just one of a dozen or so general initiation factors required for mRNA translation. Hence, biologists have studied the proteins that control how genes are transcribed into mRNA and how the mRNA is read and translated into a functioning protein.

Source: Manila Bulletin July 28, 2016 23:48 UTC