title: L-methionase: a therapeutic enzyme to treat malignancies.
abstract: Cancer is an increasing cause of mortality and morbidity throughout the world. L-methionase has potential application against many types of cancers. L-Methionase is an intracellular enzyme in bacterial species, an extracellular enzyme in fungi, and absent in mammals. L-Methionase producing bacterial strain(s) can be isolated by 5,5'-dithio-bis-(2-nitrobenzoic acid) as a screening dye. L-Methionine plays an important role in tumour cells. These cells become methionine dependent and eventually follow apoptosis due to methionine limitation in cancer cells. L-Methionine also plays an indispensable role in gene activation and inactivation due to hypermethylation and/or hypomethylation. Membrane transporters such as GLUT1 and ion channels like Na(2+), Ca(2+), K(+), and Cl(-) become overexpressed. Further, the α-subunit of ATP synthase plays a role in cancer cells growth and development by providing them enhanced nutritional requirements. Currently, selenomethionine is also used as a prodrug in cancer therapy along with enzyme methionase that converts prodrug into active toxic chemical(s) that causes death of cancerous cells/tissue. More recently, fusion protein (FP) consisting of L-methionase linked to annexin-V has been used in cancer therapy. The fusion proteins have advantage that they have specificity only for cancer cells and do not harm the normal cells.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biotechnology, Himachal Pradesh University, Summer Hill, Shimla 171 005, India.
authors.forename: Bhupender
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.affiliation: Department of Biotechnology, Himachal Pradesh University, Summer Hill, Shimla 171 005, India.
authors.forename: Sukhdev
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Singh
authors.affiliation: Department of Biotechnology, Himachal Pradesh University, Summer Hill, Shimla 171 005, India.
authors.forename: Shamsher S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Kanwar
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D013437:Carbon-Sulfur Lyases / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D006801:Humans; D008715:Methionine / Q000378:metabolism*; D008954:Models, Biological; D058990:Molecular Targeted Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D009363:Neoplasm Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D009363:Neoplasm Proteins; D008715:Methionine; D013437:Carbon-Sulfur Lyases; C021558:L-methionine gamma-lyase