{"id":2561,"date":"2015-09-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vermont.salk.edu\/news-release\/errant-gene-turns-cells-into-mobile-cancer-factories\/"},"modified":"2024-01-30T15:45:45","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T23:45:45","slug":"errant-gene-turns-cells-into-mobile-cancer-factories","status":"publish","type":"disclosure","link":"https:\/\/www.salk.edu\/zh\/news-release\/errant-gene-turns-cells-into-mobile-cancer-factories\/","title":{"rendered":"Errant gene turns cells into mobile cancer factories"},"content":{"rendered":"

LA JOLLA\u2013A single stem cell has the potential to generate an animal made of millions of different types of cells. Some cancers<\/a> contain stem-like but abnormal cells that can act like mini factories to rapidly churn out not only more copies of themselves, but also variants that are able to better survive in the challenging and changing environments to which cancers are exposed. Worse still, these stem cell-like cancers can spread to other tissues in the body, causing metastasis.<\/p>\n

Researchers at the Salk Institute demonstrated how a single master gene, called Sox10, controls if\u2013and to what extent\u2013cells turn into these potentially dangerous factories. This new understanding of Sox10 could help point the way to more efficient therapies for drug-resistant cancers.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOne of the problems with a cancer mass is that it isn\u2019t uniform. You might think of it like the microclimates leading from the Salk Institute down to the beach: some areas have rain and lots of plants while others get sun and look like a desert. Just like plants adapting to different environments, the cancer cells do the same, making some sensitive and other resistant to treatments. We have to be able to confront this tumor heterogeneity to fight cancers more effectively,\u201d says Geoffrey Wahl<\/a>, professor of Salk\u2019s \u57fa\u56e0\u8868\u8fbe\u5b9e\u9a8c\u5ba4<\/a> and senior author of the work, published September 10, 2015 in Cell Reports<\/em><\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve found that Sox10 is one type of master regulator able to unlock the cell fate door to enable cells to adopt different identities to adapt to different tumor microenvironments.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, this stem cell-like ability is present in an aggressive form of the disease known as triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). TNBC lacks three of the most common targets for breast cancer therapy and makes up about 20 percent of breast cancers in the United States; it also has overactive levels of Sox10. Other labs have shown that high levels of Sox10 are also present in melanoma, another highly metastatic disease.<\/p>\n