Luciferase fragment complementation imaging in preclinical cancer studies

Luciferase fragment complementation imaging in preclinical cancer studies


Issue 5


ABSTRACT

The luciferase fragment complementation assay (LFCA) enables molecular events to be non-invasively imaged in live cells in vitro and in vivo in a comparatively cheap and safe manner. It is a development of previous enzyme complementation assays in which reporter genes are split into two, individually enzymatically inactive, fragments that are able to complement one another upon interaction. This complementation can be used to externally visualize cellular activities.

In recent years, the number of studies which have used LFCAs to probe questions relevant to cancer have increased, and this review summarizes the most significant and interesting of these. In particular, it focuses on work conducted on the epidermal growth factor, nuclear and chemokine receptor families, and intracellular signaling pathways, including IP3, cAMP, Akt, cMyc, NRF2 and Rho GTPases. LFCAs which have been developed to image DNA methylation and detect RNA transcripts are also discussed.


oncotarget news Zoya Demidenko Dr. Zoya N. Demidenko Zoya N. Demidenko , Ph.D. is Executive Manager of the Oncotarget journal . Oncotarget publishes high-impact research papers of general interest and outstanding significance and novelty in all areas of biology and medicine: in translational, basic and clinical research including but not limited to cancer research, oncogenes, oncoproteins and tumor suppressors, signaling pathways as potential targets for therapeutic intervention, shared targets in different diseases (cancer, benign tumors, atherosclerosis, eukaryotic infections, metabolic syndrome and other age-related diseases), chemotherapy, and new therapeutic strategies. After earning her Ph.D. in molecular biology, Zoya was awarded a Fogarty post-doctoral Fellowship from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. After successful completion of post-doctoral training, she continued her professional career at George Washington University and Albert Einstein School of Medicine . In 2005 she cofounded the startup company Oncotarget Inc. which is focused on the development of anti-aging and anti-cancer drugs. Her research interests include signal transduction, cell cycle and cellular senescence, and their pharmacological targeting. In 2009 she cofounded the publishing house Impact Journals which specializes in publishing scientific journals. In 2011 she was selected to be a Member of the National Association of Professional Women .

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chronological lifespan in stationary culture: from yeast to human cells. Zoya N. Demidenko

Image
Chronological lifespan in stationary culture: from yeast to human cells A decade ago, Mikhail Blagosklonny predicted that cellular senescence is driven by mitogenic pathways, when the cell cycle is blocked and actual growth is impossible [1]. In particular, the mitogen- and nutrientsensing mTOR (Target of Rapamycin) pathway drives either cell mass growth or aging [2]. Rapamycin prevents conversion of reversible cell cycle arrest to senescence [3-11]. When the cell cycle is blocked, but mTOR is still active, then cells become senescent. This process was named gerogenic conversion or simply geroconversion [12]. Rapamycin did not by-pass arrest but suppress geroconversion. Cells remained resting but not senescent. The discovery of mTOR-dependent geroconversion allowed Blagosklonny to connect cellular aging to age-related diseases and organismal aging [13, 14]. Furthermore, this predicted that rapamycin is a gerosuppressant, which could be used to prevent age-related diseases by slowing do...
Read more

Genetic variants within the hTERT gene and the risk of colorectal cancer in Lynch syndrome

Genetic variants within the hTERT gene and the risk of colorectal cancer in Lynch syndrome ABSTRACT Lynch syndrome is an inherited cancer-predisposing disorder caused by germline mutations in the DNA mismatch repair (MMR) genes but there is a high degree of variability in cancer risk observed among carriers, suggesting the existence of modifying factors. Our aim was to investigate variants within the  hTERT  gene as a potential colorectal cancer (CRC) risk modifier for MMR gene mutation carriers. We identified 1098 MMR gene mutation carriers (420  MLH1 , 481  MSH2 , 126  MSH6 , 53  PMS2  and18  EPCAM ) from 330 families recruited from either family cancer clinics or population cancer registries of the Australasian Colorectal Cancer Family Registry between 1997 and 2012. Using weighted Cox regression after adjusting for ascertainment bias, we estimated associations between 23 SNPs within the  hTERT  gene and CRC risk. During 46,836 person...
Read more

Advances in Targeting Signal Transduction Pathways.

Advances in Targeting Signal Transduction Pathways. ABSTRACT Over the past few years, significant advances have occurred in both our understanding of the complexity of signal transduction pathways as well as the isolation of specific inhibitors which target key components in those pathways. Furthermore critical information is being accrued regarding how genetic mutations can affect the sensitivity of various types of patients to targeted therapy. Finally, genetic mechanisms responsible for the development of resistance after targeted therapy are being discovered which may allow the creation of alternative therapies to overcome resistance. This review will discuss some of the highlights over the past few years on the roles of key signaling pathways in various diseases, the targeting of signal transduction pathways and the genetic mechanisms governing sensitivity and resistance to targeted therapies. Mutations Alter the Activity of the Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK and PI3K/PTEN/Akt/mTOR pathways. The...
Read more

Rapamycin for life: A step to immortality. Zoya N Demidenko

Rapamycin for life: A step to immortality Tumor suppression is admittedly the moststudied feature of p53. Nevertheless, numerous studies have portrayed p53 as key regulator of several normal biological processes, such as tissue homeostasis, development, differentiation and fertility.1 A seminal work by Hu and colleagues revealed that p53 regulates maternal reproduction through leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) induction in mice.2 A recent report by Sohr and Engeland extends this observation and suggests a role for p53 in the blastocyst implantation process in humans as well.3 The authors show that CGB7, one of the genes encoding the b subunit of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), is transcriptionally induced by p53. hCG is a primate-specific hormone that is crucial for blastocyst implantation and early propagation of pregnancy. Interestingly, the other hCG-b-encoding genes were not induced by p53, thus implying a specific regulation leading to different  functions of these c...
Read more

The choice between p53-induced senescence and quiescence is determined in part by the mTOR pathway

The choice between p53-induced senescence and quiescence is determined in part by the mTOR pathway Abstract Transient induction of p53 can cause reversible quiescence and irreversible senescence. Using nutlin-3a (a small molecule that activates p53 without causing DNA damage), we have previously identified cell lines in which nutlin-3a caused quiescence. Importantly, nutlin-3a caused quiescence by actively suppressing the senescence program (while still causing cell cycle arrest). Noteworthy, in these cells nutlin-3a inhibited the mTOR (mammalian Target of Rapamycin) pathway, which is known to be involved in the senescence program. Here we showed that shRNA-mediated knockdown of TSC2, a negative regulator of mTOR, partially converted quiescence into senescence in these nutlin-arrested cells. In accord, in melanoma cell lines and mouse embryo fibroblasts, which easily undergo senescence in response to p53 activation, nutlin-3a failed to inhibit mTOR. In these senescence-prone cells, the...
Read more

GSK-3 as potential target for therapeutic intervention in cancer

GSK-3 as potential target for therapeutic intervention in cancer ABSTRACT The serine/threonine kinase glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) was initially identified and studied in the regulation of glycogen synthesis. GSK-3 functions in a wide range of cellular processes. Aberrant activity of GSK-3 has been implicated in many human pathologies including: bipolar depression, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) and others. In some cases, suppression of GSK-3 activity by phosphorylation by Akt and other kinases has been associated with cancer progression. In these cases, GSK-3 has tumor suppressor functions. In other cases, GSK-3 has been associated with tumor progression by stabilizing components of the beta-catenin complex. In these situations, GSK-3 has oncogenic properties. While many inhibitors to GSK-3 have been developed, their use remains controversial because of the ambiguous role of GSK-3 in cancer development. In this r...
Read more

Immuno-stimultory/regulatory gene expression patterns in advanced ovarian cancer

Immuno-stimultory/regulatory gene expression patterns in advanced ovarian cancer ABSTRACT It has been established that a high degree of tumor-infiltrating T cells is associated with ovarian cancer prognosis. We hypothesized that tumors display an immune-related program of transcription that can act in a stimulatory or a regulatory manner. We analyzed transcriptome-wide gene expression data from 503 ovarian tumors from the Cancer Genome Atlas to identify genes that show differential prognoses when stratified by CD3 expression. Genes with immunological functions and tumor antigen genes were selected for analysis. We repeated our analysis in an independent validation study. Five genes showed stimulatory/regulatory patterns at a high level of confidence (Bonferroni p < 0.05). Three of these (MAGEA8, MPL, AMHR2) were validated and one (WT1) could not be evaluated. These patterns show specific prognostic effect only in conjunction with CD3 expression. When patients express multiple transc...
Read more

High expression of cellular retinol binding protein-1 in lung adenocarcinoma is associated with poor prognosis

High expression of cellular retinol binding protein-1 in lung adenocarcinoma is associated with poor prognosis ABSTRACT Purpose: Adenocarcinoma, the most common non-small cell lung cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, with a low overall survival (OS) despite increasing attempts to achieve an early diagnosis and accomplish surgical and multimodality treatment strategies. Cellular retinol binding protein-1 (CRBP-1) regulates retinol bioavailability and cell differentiation, but its role in lung cancerogenesis remains uncertain. Experimental design: CRBP-1 expression, clinical outcome and other prognostic factors were investigated in 167 lung adenocarcinoma patients. CRBP-1 expression was evaluated by immunohistochemistry of tissue microarray sections, gene copy number analysis and tumor methylation specific PCR. Effects of CRBP-1 expression on proliferation/apoptosis gene array, protein and transcripts were investigatedin transfected A549 lung adenocarcinoma cells. Results: CRBP...
Read more

Recent progress in targeting cancer. Zoya N. Demidenko

Recent progress in targeting cancer Abstract In recent years, numerous new targets have been identified and new experimental therapeutics have been developed. Importantly, existing non-cancer drugs found novel use in cancer therapy. And even more importantly, new original therapeutic strategies to increase potency, selectivity and decrease detrimental side effects have been evaluated. Here we review some recent advances in targeting cancer. In 1977, Andrzej “Andrew” V. Schally won Nobel Prize in medicine for his research into peptide hormone production in the brain. He described the neurohormone GnRH and other releasing hormones (RH). As initially unexpected application, agonists and antagonists of these hormones have become investigational anti-cancer agents [ 1 - 3 ]. As further developments, Schally and coworkers described targeting gastrin releasing peptide receptors. Gastrin-releasing peptide (GRP) is involved in cancer growth and GRP receptors are expressed in a variety of cancer...
Read more

Mirk kinase inhibition targets ovarian cancer ascites

Mirk kinase inhibition targets ovarian cancer ascites ABSTRACT The Mirk/dyrk1B gene is commonly amplified or upregulated in ovarian cancers, and Mirk is an active kinase in these cancers. Mirk mediates cancer cell survival by decreasing toxic ROS levels through maintaining expression of a series of antioxidant genes, possibly through its transcriptional activator functions. Mirk has the unusual property of being most active in quiescent cancer cells because of marked transcriptional downregulation by Akt/mTOR signaling and by MEK/erk signaling in cycling cells. Metastatic ovarian cancer cells form ascites, non-adherent multicellular aggregates floating within the peritoneal fluid. Most ascites cancer cells are in a reversible quiescent, dormant state, suggesting that Mirk might be expressed in these quiescent cells and thus a therapeutic target. The current studies show that ovarian cancer cell line spheroids that mimic ascites cancer spheroids were largely quiescent in G0/G1, and enri...
Read more