Dr. David Andrews, a senior scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute and a professor in the department of biochemistry at the University of Toronto, has discovered that one pro-cell-death protein “double-bolt locks” to anti-cell-death proteins, which could explain cancer’s resistance to treatment.
By Matthew Pariselli
In a new eLife paper, Dr. David Andrews, a senior scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute, and his lab show how an interaction between proteins promotes cancer cell survival.
Andrews, who is also a professor in the department of biochemistry at the University of Toronto, discovered that Bim, a pro-cell-death protein, binds to anti-cell-death proteins at two sites, rendering it “double-bolt locked.” Previously, it was thought there was only one site.
This second binding site could explain Bim’s role in cancer treatment resistance and why some drugs designed to kill cancer cells fail. The discovery might also play a part in developing new drugs that permit programmed cell death to destroy cancer cells, thus making cancer therapies more effective.
“The finding is important because we identified another site that may be targetable using drugs. The second site may be a way to eventually regulate cell death more selectively using drugs,” Andrews says. Read more about the research.
