News
A Discovery by Marc Therrien Honoured by Québec Science
Published on janvier 10, 2011
The recent breakthrough by Marc Therrien and his team of a new mechanism that controls the transmission of an abnormal signal at the origin of several cancers was chosen as one of the top 10 discoveries of 2010 by Québec Science. Selected by a jury of researchers and science journalists, the annual ranking issue on newsstands now, features the work of researchers from Quebec universities and institutions.
Published in the journal Cell, the research results show that a protein complex controls the RAS/MAPK signalling pathway, responsible for some of the deadliest cancers, including pancreatic, colon and lung cancers, and melanomas. This regulating mechanism could prove to be a promising therapeutic target for the treatment of these diseases: “Our study shows that a protein complex, EJC, controls production of the MAPK protein, which acts directly on the cell. When this complex is deficient, the signalling pathway is inhibited which restricts the chaotic proliferation of the cell at the origin of many cancers,” Marc Therrien explains. “If we target EJC and the factors that regulate its activity, we could potentially prevent the transmission of abnormal signals that trigger several cancers.” In addition to serving as a promising therapeutic target for treating cancer, the regulating mechanism discovered for MAPK could also apply to several other genes.
Paper cited Ashton-Beaucage D, Udell CM, Lavoie H, Baril C, Lefrançois M, Chagnon P, Gendron P, Caron-Lizotte O, Bonneil E, Thibault P, Therrien M. (2010) The exon junction complex controls the splicing of MAPK and other long intron-containing transcripts in Drosophila. Cell 143 :251-262