RNA regulation in neurologic disease and cancer.

The paraneoplastic neurologic diseases (PNDs) are brain degenerations that develop in the setting of clinically inapparent cancers. PNDs arise when common cancers express brain proteins, triggering an anti-tumor immune response and tumor immunity. Research on these brain-cancer proteins has revealed a new world of neuron-specific RNA binding proteins whose functions may be aberrantly used by tumor cells. Efforts to gain insight into their function has led to the development of new methods and strategies to understand RNA protein regulation in living tissues.