PTEN: Its Deregulation and Tumorigenesis

PPARG Epigenetic Deregulation and Its Role in Colorectal Tumorigenesis

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) plays critical roles in lipid storage, glucose metabolism, energy homeostasis, adipocyte differentiation, inflammation, and cancer. Its function in colon carcinogenesis has largely been debated; accumulating evidence, however, supports a role as tumor suppressor through modulation of crucial pathways in cell differentiation, apoptosis, an...

Pten, Tumorigenesis, and Stem Cell Self-Renewal

Self-renewal pathways crucial for maintaining stem cells are deregulated in cancer, raising the spectre that cancer therapies targeting such pathways might also ablate normal stem cells. As Yilmaz et al. (2006) report in a recent Nature paper, this may not be the case for the tumor suppressor protein Pten, which drives the self-renewal of normal hematopoietic stem cells and the formation of leu...

Susceptibility of Epithelium to PTEN-Deficient Tumorigenesis

Cooperation between FGF8b overexpression and PTEN deficiency in prostate tumorigenesis.

Two commonly occurring genetic aberrations of human prostate cancer [i.e., overexpression of a mitogenic polypeptide (fibroblast growth factor 8, isoform b or FGF8b) and loss of function of PTEN tumor suppressor] were recapitulated into a new combinatorial mouse model. This model harboring the Fgf8b transgene and haploinsufficiency in Pten, both in a prostate epithelium-specific manner, yielded...

LZTS2 and PTEN collaboratively regulate ß-catenin in prostatic tumorigenesis

The leucine zipper tumor suppressor 2 (LZTS2) was identified as a tumor susceptibility gene within the 10q24.3 chromosomal region, and is approximately 15Mb from the PTEN locus. This region containing the both loci is frequently deleted in a variety of human malignancies, including prostate cancer. LZTS2 is a ß-catenin-binding protein and a negative regulator of Wnt signaling. Overexpression of...