Cytoskeleton and Cancer
Cytoskeleton and Cancer
Stopping cancerous cells from spreading
The most dangerous event for a person with cancer arguably occurs when cancer cells break off from a primary tumour and travel through the circulation to a new site, seeding a secondary tumour, an event known as metastasis.
Ora Bernard is Head of SVI’s Cytoskeleton and Cancer Unit and her research interest is the cellular cytoskeleton, which is necessary for cellular structure, motion and cell differentiation and division. Deregulation of the cytoskeleton is also an important contributing factor to cancer metastasis.
Ora’s group focuses on a protein called LIMK, discovered in the lab, which they have shown plays an important role in cancer metastasis. Ora explains,
"We have shown that LIMK is found at very high levels in metastatic cancer cells and if we inhibit it, we can inhibit the cells’ metastatic abilities. This suggests that manipulation of LIMK1 activity might provide an exciting new possibility for cancer therapy.”
While it is clear that LIMK1 has a major effect on cell metastasis, exactly how it increases cell motility remains undefined, and this is a major research theme of the lab.
In addition to these studies, the group is also investigating LIMK2, a protein closely related to LIMK1. The group has recently shown that mice which lack LIMK2 are obese, insulin resistant and have enlarged fat cells, indicating a potentially new and unexpected role for the protein in obesity.