{"id":236426,"date":"2026-05-03T11:10:02","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T16:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/protein-interactions-in-childhood-brain-cancer"},"modified":"2026-05-03T11:10:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T16:10:02","slug":"protein-interactions-in-childhood-brain-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/protein-interactions-in-childhood-brain-cancer","title":{"rendered":"Protein interactions in childhood brain cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Neuroblastoma is an unusual tumor disease of the nervous system that almost exclusively affects children, mainly younger than two years old. About half of the children have high-risk tumors with a lower chance of being cured. N-MYC is linked to poorer prognosis in neuroblastoma.<\/p>\n

Most proteins have a definite three-dimensional structure that usually contributes to their function and how they interact with other proteins. MYC is different and does not really have a fixed three-dimensional structure. The protein is flexible and constantly changes shape, which poses a challenge to researchers seeking to understand how MYC proteins work.<\/p>\n

Also, MYC proteins are involved in the processes necessary for healthy cells to grow and divide. To prevent all cells in the body being harmed, it is important that a drug inhibits only the MYC function that is the problem in cancer cells, and nothing else. In other words, it takes a molecule that specifically affects a certain interaction between N-MYC and another protein.<\/p>\n

In the current study, the researchers focused on the protein Aurora A, which also has a role in neuroblastoma and many other tumor forms. Preventing these proteins from interacting with each other has been suggested as a way to treat childhood tumors.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo stop an interaction, you need to know where it\u2019s happening. Despite the fact that N-MYC constantly changes shape, we now know where the two proteins anchor to each other. This provided clues as to what the medication should look like. We\u2019ve also found a small molecule that manages to break apart the proteins, which lays a good foundation for future clinical trials,\u201d says the first author.<\/p>\n

The authors show that N-Myc binding to the Aurora A N-lobe can be inhibited by the small-molecule AurkinA, providing opportunity for therapeutical strategies to disrupt this interaction. ScienceMission sciencenewshighlights.<\/p>\n

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Continue reading \u201cProtein interactions in childhood brain cancer\u201d | ><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neuroblastoma is an unusual tumor disease of the nervous system that almost exclusively affects children, mainly younger than two years old. About half of the children have high-risk tumors with a lower chance of being cured. N-MYC is linked to poorer prognosis in neuroblastoma. Most proteins have a definite three-dimensional structure that usually contributes to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236426","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\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}