Research News
These proteins are a potential therapeutic target for enhancing the effect of some cancer treatments.
Inhibition of TLK proteins triggers the Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres pathway, a common process in some of the most aggressive types of cancer, such as glioblastoma.
The study, performed by the Genomic Instability and Cancer Laboratory at IRB Barcelona, has been published in the journal Cell Reports.
The mechanism unveiled triggers a mutation fog, causing hundreds of mutations in each tumor, which spread through the genome of lung, head-and-neck and breast cancers.
Researchers from the Genome Data Science Lab have identified the antiviral APOBEC3A enzyme as the major cause of this new type of hypermutation.
Published in Nature Genetics, the study shows how the mutation fog process generates many oncogenic “cancer driver” mutations, thus accelerating tumour development.
Of the 614 cell lines studied, 7% closely corresponded to a different type of cancer than that thought to give rise to the cell line.
The Genome Data Science Laboratory at IRB Barcelona has drawn up a reference list of 366 cell lines in which the genetic pattern corresponds to the type of tumour that they intend to model.
The work shows that studies using the cell lines on this reference list have a greater discovery rate, and has been published in the journal Science Advances.
Researchers led by Natàlia Carulla find that specific amyloid-beta (Aβ) protein ensembles have the capacity to disrupt the membrane of neurons, causing their death.
The results have been published in the journal Nature communications.
DNA damage caused by chemical mutagens is not repaired immediately and can create more genetic diversity in tumours, as lesions pass on unrepaired over several rounds of cell division.
A study by the Liver Cancer Evolution Consortium explores the evolution of tumours after chemical damage, offering interesting insights into how mutational processes work.
The work has been published in the journal Nature.
A role of colibactin-producing E. coli in carcinogenesis.
The Chemical Checker provides processed, harmonized and ready-to-use bioactivity information on more than 1M small molecules
The tool, developed by the Structural Bioinformatics and Network Biology lab at IRB Barcelona, has been published in Nature Biotechnology.
Researchers at IRB Barcelona discover a new mechanism in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer cells.
The inhibition of CPEB2, a key factor in the estrogen signalling pathway, causes cancer cells to proliferate less and protects mice against luminal breast cancer.
The Colorectal Cancer Lab at IRB Barcelona identifies the capacity to synthesize proteins (or biosynthetic capacity) as a key property for the regenerative potential of colon cancer cells.
Published in Cell Stem Cell, the study proposes a new therapeutic focus for the scientific community and the pharmaceutical industry to explore.
More than 200 regions (amino acids) in histones are identified as responsible for regulating the response to cell stress.
The study reports that histones undergo distinct modifications depending on the type of cell stress.
The work by the Cell Signaling laboratory has been published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.
