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Cancer biology

Gone but not forgotten

Nature volume 445, pages 606–607 (2007)Cite this article

The p53 tumour-suppressor protein is a cell's principal guardian against cancer. Most cancers eliminate p53 — but it seems that its pathway remains intact, so resurrecting it might provide a cancer therapy.

Once fully established, many cancers rely for their maintenance on the persistent activation of certain cancer-promoting genes (oncogenes)1,2. Drug developers hope to exploit this dependency, as it makes tumours vulnerable to inhibitors of the associated oncogenic proteins. Indeed, several such inhibitors have already proven to be effective cancer treatments. Three papers3,4,5 now confirm an analogous idea for a tumour-suppressor protein that limits cancer growthFootnote 1. The work reveals that persistent inactivation of the p53 tumour-suppressor pathway is similarly required for tumour maintenance, and thus opens new therapeutic avenues against cancer.

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Figure 1: Approaches to reactivating the p53 pathway.

Notes

  1. This article and the Nature papers concerned3,4 were published online on 24 January 2007.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine and Genetics, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 27599, North Carolina, USA

    Norman E. Sharpless

  2. Center for Applied Cancer Science and Departments of Medical Oncology, Medicine and Genetics, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA

    Ronald A. DePinho

Authors
  1. Norman E. Sharpless
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  2. Ronald A. DePinho
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Sharpless, N., DePinho, R. Gone but not forgotten. Nature 445, 606–607 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05567

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