April 18, 2019
Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University
A research group at the Institute for Advanced Biosciences (Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture; Director: Masaru Tomita), Keio University, led by Project Lecturer Yasuhiro Saito and Professor Tomoyoshi Soga, has discovered a protein that is key to the proliferation of breast cancer and the efficacy of breast cancer therapeutic drugs.
Cancer cells are known to proliferate abnormally in the human body, even in various harsh environments with challenges such as nutrition, acidity (pH), and oxygen concentration. Particularly in a nutrient-limited (nutrient stress) environment, cancer cells must adapt to efficiently take in nutrients from their surroundings. The research group found that the cellular uptake of the amino acid leucine, through the function of two proteins, LLGL2 and SLC7A5, is key for breast cancer cells to adapt and proliferate in a nutrient stress environment. Furthermore, they also discovered that these two proteins, LLGL2 and SLC7A5, are associated with the development of resistance to breast cancer therapeutic drugs.
This research is a groundbreaking discovery. By elucidating in detail for the first time in the world the mechanism of leucine uptake in breast cancer cells, it reveals that a single amino acid is key to the proliferation of breast cancer cells and, furthermore, that proteins involved in the cellular uptake of amino acids affect the efficacy of cancer therapeutic drugs.
This research was conducted in collaboration with Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA) and was published in the online advance edition of the British scientific journal "Nature" on April 18, 2019 (JST).
Please see below for the full press release.