Volume 10 Issue 6, June 2010

Ragulator is a new, crucial component of the mTORC1 signalling pathway.

Loss of expression of the homeobox geneHOXA9 correlates with more aggressive breast cancer phenotypes, perhaps owing to the ability of HOXA9 to regulate expression of BRCA1.

The NLRP3 inflammasome protects against tumorigenesis in an experimental mouse model of colitis-associated cancer.

Fascin1 is the target of migrastatin analogues in inhibiting tumour metastasis.

The entire genome sequence of biopsy samples from a basal-like breast cancer primary tumour and brain metastasis identifies some of the genetic changes evident in the metastases that were also present in a subset of cells from the primary tumour.

Co-administration of the cyclic peptide iRGD with cancer drugs improves efficacy.

Are statins still viable chemopreventive agents for cancer?

Three recent papers extend the list of upstream regulators of the Hippo pathway and identify links between this pathway and Wnt signalling.

Alterations to lipid metabolism pathways might underlie the pathogenesis of several diseases, including cancer.

Myofibroblasts establish stem cell properties in colon cancer cells through the regulation of Wnt signalling.

The presence of single nucleotide polymorphisms in microRNA genes, their processing machinery and target binding sites might affect cancer risk, treatment efficacy and patient prognosis. This evolving field of cancer biology is discussed in this Review.

Helicobacter pyloricauses gastric adenocarcinoma in a minority of infected individuals. What have we learned about bacterial and host-specific factors that lead to malignancy, and what canH. pyloritell us about inflammatory carcinomas that develop beyond the gastric niche?

Transforming growth factor-β (TGFβ) signalling regulates tumour progression by cell-autonomous signalling pathways and through tumour–stromal interactions, and can have either a tumour-suppressing or tumour-promoting function, depending on cellular context. Such inherent complexity of TGFβ signalling results in arduous, but promising, assignments for developing therapeutic strategies.

The four colony-stimulating factors (CSFs) regulate the generation and some functions of granulocytes and macrophages, and recombinant granulocyte-CSF and granulocyte–macrophage-CSF are used to treat patients with reduced white blood cell levels. How did we come to our understanding of the CSFs and what might the future opportunities be?

The gap junction proteins connexins have previously been thought of as tumour suppressors. However, more recent evidence challenges this view, as they can also have roles in tumour progression and metastasis. Therefore, might connexins be more accurately classified as conditional tumour suppressors?

That a substantial proportion of cell lines is mislabelled or replaced by cells derived from a different individual, tissue or species has been a long known, but largely ignored problem. The history of cell line misidentification and recent efforts to develop a standard for the authentication of human cell lines using short tandem repeat profiling is discussed in this article.