Updated: May 15, 2017
On May 8, a paper entitled Hippo Signaling Suppresses Cell Ploidy and Tumorigenesis through Skp2was published in Cancer Cell, the world’s top academic journal in the field of cancer research by a research team lead by Prof. Zhou Dawang and Prof.Chen Lanfen. The team, which is with the State Key Laboratory of Cellular Stress Biology, Innovation Center for Cell Signalling Network, School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University, discovered that the Hippo pathway effector Yap promotes the diploid-polyploid conversion and polyploid cell growth through the Akt-Skp2 axis, and that the Hippo signal deficiency may lead to genomic instability which would further induce liver tumorigenesis.
Most somatic cells of the eukaryote are diploid, which are composed of two groups of chromosomes, one inherited from the male parent and the other from the female parent. However, some specific tissues like heart and liver contain polyploid cells, especially the liver tissue which contains a rather high proportion of polyploid cells such as tetraploid and octaploid. As liver is the primary detoxification organ in the human body and toxins such as alcohol and hepatitis virus or toxic metabolites are prone to induce genetic mutation in the cells, polyploid is found to be able to help maintain liver homeostasis by supplying compensatory normal genes.
This study helps provide a new strategy for the diagnosis and treatment of liver cancer by discovering that the depletion or inactivation of Akt or Skp2 abrogated Hippo signal deficiency-induced liver tumorigenesis. The research team led by Professor Zhou Dawang has long been engaged in the Hippo signaling pathway research, and recently they have successfully revealed the important role of Hippo signaling pathway in tissue regeneration and remodelling, tumorigenesis and immunological diseases through approaches such as gene knock-out, knock-in or transgenic means. For the full article, please click on the link as follows: http://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/fulltext/S1535-6108 (17) 30159-9
Edited by Li Zhiruo & Luo Shuang
