Professor Heide Ford, the University of Colorado Medicine Endowed Chair in Pharmacology, gave a presentation Wednesday on her lab’s research into the role of proteins in cancer growth and spread at the UW Health Sciences Learning Center .
The presentation focused on inhibiting EYA phosphatases, a group of proteins that play an important role in embryo development, which also affect cancer growth.
The EYA phosphatases are at the center of several pathways that increase both the growth of existing cancer tumors and in allowing cancer to spread to other locations.
In one pathway, it deregulates the protein MYC, which is related to tumor growth. In another, it prevents the immune system from sending a response into cancerous tumors.
Ford said her research was primarily focused on whether an inhibitor for EYA2 could be used to inhibit EYA3, which is more strongly associated with the amplification of MYC and in immune deregulation. The EYA3 protein is strongly correlated to the growth and spread of certain breast cancers.
One issue with phosphatase inhibitors is that they often block many proteins, not just the intended target. However, researchers discovered an inhibitor that specifically targets EYA proteins, but it only affects EYA2. This finding halted their progress towards animal trials for cancers linked to EYA3.
Because of the specificity of the inhibitor, part of the lab pivoted to using it against group 3 medulloblastomas, an extremely aggressive brain cancer that mostly occurs in children.
This cancer typically has MYC proteins unregulated, driven by the EYA2 proteins. They found some success in animal models, but did not see tumor growth and metastasis decrease by as much as predicted by molecular models.
Ford said that another research team had decided to try animal trials for the inhibitor against EYA3 breast cancers with some success.
Overall, the research helped scientists better understand the role of EYA3 in allowing cancer growth and spread and a role for inhibitors targets towards specific phosphatases.
