Understanding regulation
19 Jan 2012 by Evoluted New Media
An unexpected discovery has opened up new opportunities for targeting cancer
A team from the University of Leicester have opened up a whole new approach to the therapeutic intervention for a family of anti-cancer drug targets.
Using the microfocus X-ray source at Oxfordshire’s Diamond Light Source, Professor John Schwabe and his colleagues – Drs Watson, Fairall and Santos – have revealed a new understanding of how transcriptional repression complexes work.
“We have discovered a completely new and unexpected link between inositol phosphate signalling (in this case IP4) and the regulation of histone deacetylase enzymes and hence transcriptional repression of gene silencing,” said Professor John Schwabe for the department of biochemistry.
Transcriptional regulatory complexes have an important role in regulating development, differentiation, cancer and homeostasis. Schwabe says the research has shown that IP4 acts as a natural signalling molecule to regulate histone deacetylase enzymes, which play a key role in regulating gene expression.
“Apart from considerable intellectual importance of understanding how transcription is regulated, repression complexes are important therapeutic targets for a number of cancers including several types of leukaemia,” said Schwabe.
Schwabe says the research identifies several new means to potentially target histone deacetylase enzymes therapeutically, either by using drugs to prevent IP4 binding to the enzyme or by interfering with the pathway through which the body makes IP4.
“This work opens up a whole new area of research with the potential for new drugs and a new approach to targeting histone deacetylease enzymes,” Schwabe said.
The research – which has been ongoing for six years – is currently funded through £1.4 million grant from the Wellcome Trust. The latest paper has been published in Nature.
