Harnessing Protease Activity to Improve Cancer Care

Proteolysis plays critical roles in normal and pathologic physiology; these enzymes are intricately involved in cancer progression and spread. Our understanding of protease function has advanced from nonspecific degrading enzymes to a modern appreciation of their diverse roles in posttranslational modification and signaling in a complexmicroenvironment.This newunderstanding has led to next-generation diagnostics and therapeutics that exploit protease activity in cancer. For diagnostics, protease activity may be measured as a biomarker of cancer, withwide-ranging utility fromearly detection to monitoring therapeutic response. Therapeutically, while broad inhibition of protease activity proved disappointing, new approaches that more specifically modulate proteases in concert with secondary targets might enable