Researchers at Monash University and the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, have uncovered the structure of the molecular switch that controls communication between tumor cells. The “switch” involves a cell-surface protease called ADAM10 that regulates the signals that promote tumor growth and motility of cancer cells.
Understanding the structure of the ADAM10 molecule provides the basis for developing pharmaceutical drugs to inhibit tumor growth and metastasis, the spreading of cancerous tumor cells throughout the body.
The authors believe the findings alter the predominant perception of the way cell signaling molecules, such as growth factor and cell positioning receptors, communicate and regulate processes such as cell adhesion and motility. Although scientists knew ADAM10 was crucial to tumor growth, how it actually operated to control other molecules was unclear.
“We discovered that ADAM10 specifically recognized only Eph and Ephrin molecules that were actively engaged in signaling, and by manipulating the ADAM structure were able to interfere with this molecular recognition and arrest signaling,” said senior research fellow Dr Martin Lackmann from Monash’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. “Being able to regulate the communication between these cell surface molecules, which are found at high levels in many human cancers, by preventing the function of ADAM, may actually stop the growth and spread of tumors.”