{"id":105585,"date":"2020-04-17T09:31:31","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T16:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/researchers-unlock-secret-of-deadly-brain-cancers-immortality"},"modified":"2020-04-17T09:31:31","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T16:31:31","slug":"researchers-unlock-secret-of-deadly-brain-cancers-immortality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/researchers-unlock-secret-of-deadly-brain-cancers-immortality","title":{"rendered":"Researchers unlock secret of deadly brain cancer\u2019s \u2018immortality\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-unlock-secret-of-deadly-brain-cancers-immortality2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>UC San Francisco researchers have discovered how a mutation in a gene regulator called the <i>TERT<\/i> promoter\u2014the third most common mutation among all human cancers and the most common mutation in the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma\u2014confers \u201cimmortality\u201d on tumor cells, enabling the unchecked cell division that powers their aggressive growth.<\/p>\n<p>The research, published September 10, 2018 in <i>Cancer Cell<\/i>, found that patient-derived glioblastoma cells with <i>TERT<\/i> promoter mutations depend on a particular form of a protein called GABP for their survival. GABP is critical to the workings of most cells, but the researchers discovered that the specific component of this protein that activates mutated <i>TERT<\/i> promoters, a subunit called GABP-\u00df1L, appears to be dispensable in <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/normal+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">normal cells<\/a>: Eliminating this subunit using CRISPR-based gene editing dramatically slowed the growth of the human <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/cancer+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cancer cells<\/a> in lab dishes and when they were transplanted into mice, but removing GABP-\u00df1L from healthy cells had no discernable effect.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese findings suggest that the \u00df1L subunit is a promising new drug target for aggressive glioblastoma and potentially the many other cancers with <i>TERT<\/i> promoter mutations,\u201d said study senior author Joseph Costello, Ph.D., a leading UCSF neuro-oncology researcher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UC San Francisco researchers have discovered how a mutation in a gene regulator called the TERT promoter\u2014the third most common mutation among all human cancers and the most common mutation in the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma\u2014confers \u201cimmortality\u201d on tumor cells, enabling the unchecked cell division that powers their aggressive growth. The research, published September 10, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,412,269,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-life-extension","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}