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Potential novel targets for anti-cancer therapy are revealed in a paper published online in Molecular Systems Biology. Forest White and colleagues investigated the EGFR/HER2 signaling pathway, which is perturbed in human breast cancer.
The HER2 receptor is over-expressed in several human cancers and is the target of the recently developed Herceptin therapy against metastatic breast cancer. Understanding the mechanisms relating HER2 over-expression to tumor cell proliferation and migration is key for the development of novel anti-cancer therapeutics. The authors of the present study applied a number of high-throughput technologies and systems biology approaches to investigate the impact of high levels of HER2 receptors on intracellular signaling. Their analysis links the effects of HER2 over-expression to cell migration and reveals many potential novel anti-cancer targets. According to a related News and Views article from Mark Greene and Alan Berezov, these findings 'mark an important breakthrough' in the characterization of the EGFR signaling network in tumors. Author contacts: Forest M White (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA)
E-mail: fwhite@mit.edu Mark Greene (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA) N&V author
E-mail: greene@reo.med.upenn.edu
Editorial contact: Thomas Lemberger (European Molecular Biology Organization, Heidelberg, Germany)
E-mail: thomas.lemberger@embo.org Full Text available online. (C) Molecular Systems Biology press release.
Message posted by: Trevor M. D'Souza
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