Rehabilitation of cancer through oncogene inactivation.
The inactivation of the MYC oncogene alone can reverse tumorigenesis. Upon MYC inactivation, tumors stereotypically reverse, undergoing proliferative arrest, cellular differentiation and/or apoptosis. The precise consequences of MYC inactivation appear to depend upon both genetic and epigenetic parameters. In some types of cancer following MYC inactivation, tumor cells become well differentiated and biologically and histologically normal, inducing sustained tumor regression. However, in some cases, these normal-appearing cells are actually dormant tumor cells and upon MYC reactivation they rapidly recover their tumorigenic properties. Future therapies to treat cancer will need to address the possibility that tumor cells can camouflage a normal phenotype following treatment, resting in a dormant, latently cancerous state.
Shachaf
Catherine M
CM
Division of Oncology, Departments of Medicine and Pathology, Stanford University, 269 Campus Drive, Stanford, CA 94305-5151, USA.
Felsher
Dean W
DW
D000818:Animals; D004260:DNA Repair; D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D020868:Gene Silencing; D016259:Genes, myc; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D008954:Models, Biological; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology