Treatment of head and neck cancers is still rather poor and worldwide new treatment options are sought. Sensitizing radioresistant tumours by combining irradiation with other therapeutics to induce apoptosis are widely investigated. We examined whether chicken anaemia virus-derived apoptin protein would have a beneficial effect on irradiation of radiosensitive SCC61 and radioresistant SQD9 huma...

Apoptin, a protein expressed by chicken anemia virus, is found predominantly in the cytoplasm in normal cells, whereas it localizes in the nucleus in transformed and malignant cells. However, the mechanisms that regulate the different subcellular localization of Apoptin in normal and tumor cells have not been fully clarified. In this work, a putative nuclear export signal (NES) in Apoptin was p...

Apoptin, a protein derived from chicken anemia virus, has previously been shown to induce apoptosis in a p53-independent and Bcl-2-stimulated manner in transformed and tumorigenic human cells but not in normal diploid human cells, suggesting that it is a potential agent for tumor therapy. Here we report that Apoptin can induce apoptosis in UV-C-irradiated diploid skin fibroblasts from individua...

Apoptin, a protein from the chicken anemia virus, has attracted attention because it specifically kills tumor cells while leaving normal cells unharmed. The reason for this tumor selectivity is unclear and depends on subcellular localization, as apoptin resides in the cytoplasm of normal cells but in the nuclei of transformed cells. It was shown that nuclear localization and tumor-specific kill...

Apoptin, a small protein from chicken anemia virus, has attracted great attention, because it specifically kills tumor cells while leaving normal cells unharmed. The subcellular localization of apoptin appears to be crucial for this tumor-selective activity. In normal cells, apoptin resides in the cytoplasm, whereas in cancerous cells it translocates into the nucleus. The nuclear translocation ...

Most existing chemotherapeutics lack adequate specificity for transformed cells and therefore have high rates of collateral damage to normal tissue. Moreover, such therapies often depend on p53 to induce cell death and are ineffective on the large number of human cancers that have lost p53 function. The discovery of novel p53independent cancer therapies is therefore of significant interest. The...

Nonfunctional p53 and especially upregulation of Bcl-x(L) result in advanced disease and poor prognosis of patients suffering head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Aberrancies of Bcl-x(L) and/or p53 in HNSCC lead to inability of anticancer drugs to induce apoptosis. Bcl-x(L) and/or mutated p53 inhibit the apoptotic process by preventing the mitochondrial release of cytochrome c and/or ...

In this study we have calculated a 3D structure of apoptin and through modeling and docking approaches, we show its interaction with Bcr-Abl oncoprotein and its downstream signaling components, following which we confirm some of the newly-found interactions by biochemical methods. Bcr-Abl oncoprotein is aberrantly expressed in chronic myelogenous leukaemia (CML). It has several distinct functio...

OBJECTIVES The phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3-K)/Akt pathway is well known for the regulation of cell survival, proliferation, and some metabolic routes. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this study, we document a novel role for the PI3-K/Akt pathway during cell death induced by apoptin, a tumour-selective inducer of apoptosis. RESULTS We show for the first time that apoptin interacts with the p...

Gene therapy is one of the most promising potential therapeutic strategies for many types of cancer. Cell apoptosis is an active, programmed physiological process of the body, and its disruption has been closely associated with the occurrence of tumor development. Apoptin is known to induce tumor cell apoptosis. In the present study, the MCF-7 breast cancer cell line was transfected with a huma...