Polypyrimidine tract-binding protein is a key regulator of splicing, Beck said. Defects in pre-messenger RNA splicing have been shown to cause a variety of human diseases. Evidence suggests that altered splicing is associated with and possibly involved in tumor progression or metastasis.
"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time anyone has shown that interference with the production of a splicing factor can inhibit tumor cell growth and tumor invasiveness," Beck said. "Alternatively-spliced genes and splicing factors are likely to play a key role as therapeutic targets and diagnostic markers in the next decade."