Abstract
Survivin is an inhibitor of apoptosis protein that also plays critical roles in regulating the cell cycle and mitosis. Its prominent expression in essentially all human malignancies, and low or absent expression in most normal tissues, suggests that it would be an ideal target for cancer-directed therapy. Impeding development of safe and effective survivin antagonists for clinical use is a lack of understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which survivin differentially affects apoptosis and cell division, in normal and malignant cells. We show that the diverse functional roles of survivin can be explained, in part, by its heterodimerization with survivin splice variants in tumor cells. Survivin and survivin-ΔEx3 interact within the mitochondria where they may inhibit mitochondrial-dependent apoptosis. If the expression of all survivin forms is eliminated by siRNA transfections, cells undergo both apoptosis and defective cell division. Overall, we provide new insights suggesting that targeting specific survivin isoforms, rather than survivin alone, may selectively and effectively destroy tumor cells. These findings are likely to have a significant impact in the design of biologic agents for clinical therapy.
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Abbreviations
- MEF:
-
mouse embryo fibroblast
- GFP:
-
green fluorescent protein
- IAP:
-
inhibitor of apoptosis
- BIR:
-
baculovirus inhibition of apoptosis protein repeat
- siRNA:
-
small interfering RNA
- PCD:
-
programmed cell death
- VCR:
-
vincristine
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Elsa U. Pardee Foundation and the Hope Street Kids Foundation. We thank Tara Grove and Lynette Rogers for their technical assistance. We also thank John Gilbert for his editorial assistance with this manuscript.
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Caldas, H., Jiang, Y., Holloway, M. et al. Survivin splice variants regulate the balance between proliferation and cell death. Oncogene 24, 1994–2007 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.onc.1208350
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.onc.1208350
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