( funded by the National Cancer Institu...)Molecular force field helps cancer cells defend against attack

"We take our patients, we look at their tumors and we try to find clues to why their tumors grow, why their tumors spread, and we look at the various genes and proteins that make their tumors what they are," Cance said. "So from the patient's standpoint, the more that we can characterize their tumor and understand why it behaves like it does, the greater chance we'll then be able to go back to the patient with therapeutics, and that laboratory bench to bedside is what our research is all about."

H. Shelton Earp III, M.D., director of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, said, "The Cance lab finding follows on their groundbreaking work showing that human tumors survive in part by overexpressing FAK. This current discovery provides an important clue as to how to exploit this overexpression for the therapy of human cancers."

Steven Frisch, a professor of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology at West Virginia University, said the research raises "the compelling possibility of targeting FAK for a novel cancer therapy."

"FAK plays a major role in the survival of tumor cells in their normal attached state, and, when over-expressed or hyperactivated, it opens a molecular gate that allows tumor cells to detach and metastasize," Frisch said. "The Cance lab's new observations on the VEGFR3-FAK interaction are both of interest for understanding the functions of these two pivotal molecules in cell behavior, as well as sharpening the focus of FAK-based drug discovery efforts to control cancer."