Dart Anna E, Gordon-Weeks Phillip R
MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, New Hunt's House, King's College London, Guy's Campus, London, SE1 1UL, UK.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2017;1006:375-389. doi: 10.1007/978-4-431-56550-5_23.
Cancer progression is characterized by the capacity of malignant cells to exploit an innate migratory ability in order to invade adjacent tissues, enter the vasculature and eventually metastasize to secondary organs. It is this spread of cancer cells that is the major cause of death in cancer patients. Understanding the basic biology of how cancer cells generate an invasive phenotype will be crucial to the identification of drug targets with the aim of impeding tumour dissemination. Ten years on from its initial description in neuronal cells, drebrin expression was found in a wide variety of non-neuronal cells that importantly included cancer cell lines. Since then mounting evidence suggests that drebrin may be a key player in the advancement of several diverse cancer types where its expression is frequently upregulated. Cancer cell motility and invasion are crucial elements in the metastatic cascade and involve dramatic changes in cellular morphology that are associated with dynamic remodelling of the cytoskeleton. Interestingly, it now appears that drebrin could deliver this role during cancer development.
癌症进展的特征在于恶性细胞利用其固有的迁移能力来侵袭邻近组织、进入脉管系统并最终转移至继发器官。正是癌细胞的这种扩散成为癌症患者死亡的主要原因。了解癌细胞如何产生侵袭性表型的基础生物学对于识别旨在阻止肿瘤播散的药物靶点至关重要。自其最初在神经元细胞中被描述以来已有十年，后来发现德雷布林（drebrin）在多种非神经元细胞中表达，其中重要的包括癌细胞系。从那时起，越来越多的证据表明，德雷布林可能是几种不同癌症类型进展中的关键因素，其表达常常上调。癌细胞的运动性和侵袭是转移级联反应中的关键要素，涉及细胞形态的显著变化，这些变化与细胞骨架的动态重塑相关。有趣的是，现在看来德雷布林可能在癌症发展过程中发挥这一作用。
