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Signal Transduction
Signaling from the cell surface to the nucleus is increasingly recognized as critical to a number of biological processes, including not only tumor cell proliferation and apoptosis, but also the immune response and neovascularization associated with tumor development. Elucidation of these pathways promises to provide possible new targets for therapeutic strategies in cancer treatment, and the full development of this area represents one of CRI's goals for the coming years. Studies of signaling in normal cells, as they are influenced by the tumor microenvironment (Stephan Ladisch, MD), have resulted in development of a new paradigm for EGF receptor signaling (J Biol Chem 35:36481-9, 2004), a process that is exquisitely sensitive to the tumor microenvironment, thus facilitating tumor progression. Other studies investigating tumor cells (Tobey J. MacDonald, MD, and Brian R. Rood, MD) have implicated signaling through the EGF and PDGF receptor pathways to be critical to the progression of childhood glioma and medulloblastoma. The interaction of the TRK family of receptors with the tumor microenvironment in human neuroblastoma suggests that signaling through this important family of receptors may be influenced by molecules shed by neuroblastoma cells. Sasa Radoja, PhD, studies signaling events that regulate granule exocytosis in CD8+ cytotoxic lymphocyte. Together with Stanislav Vukmanovic, MD, PhD, he has identified Protein kinase C delta as a novel regulator of this effector function.
For more information contact:
Stephan Ladisch, MD
Vice Chair for
External Affairs, Department of Pediatrics
Children's Research Institute
Center for Cancer and Immunology Research
Children's National Medical Center
111 Michigan Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20010
202-476-3898
202-476-3929 fax
sladisch@cnmc.org
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