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Cancer: tilting at windmills?
One of the striking characteristics of cancer cells is their phenotypic diversity and ability to switch phenotypes in response to environmental fluctuations. Such phenotypic changes (e.g. from drug-sensitive to drug-resistant), which are critical for survival and proliferation, are widely believed t...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848908/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24063528 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-4598-12-108 |
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author | Kulkarni, Prakash Shiraishi, Takumi Kulkarni, Rahul V |
author_facet | Kulkarni, Prakash Shiraishi, Takumi Kulkarni, Rahul V |
author_sort | Kulkarni, Prakash |
collection | PubMed |
description | One of the striking characteristics of cancer cells is their phenotypic diversity and ability to switch phenotypes in response to environmental fluctuations. Such phenotypic changes (e.g. from drug-sensitive to drug-resistant), which are critical for survival and proliferation, are widely believed to arise due to mutations in the cancer cell’s genome. However, there is growing concern that such a deterministic view is not entirely consistent with multiple lines of evidence which indicate that cancer can arise in the absence of mutations and can even be reversed to normalcy despite the mutations. In this Commentary, we wish to present an alternate view that highlights how stochasticity in protein interaction networks (PINs) may play a key role in cancer initiation and progression. We highlight the potential role of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and submit that targeting IDPs can lead to new insights and treatment protocols for cancer. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3848908 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-38489082013-12-04 Cancer: tilting at windmills? Kulkarni, Prakash Shiraishi, Takumi Kulkarni, Rahul V Mol Cancer Commentary One of the striking characteristics of cancer cells is their phenotypic diversity and ability to switch phenotypes in response to environmental fluctuations. Such phenotypic changes (e.g. from drug-sensitive to drug-resistant), which are critical for survival and proliferation, are widely believed to arise due to mutations in the cancer cell’s genome. However, there is growing concern that such a deterministic view is not entirely consistent with multiple lines of evidence which indicate that cancer can arise in the absence of mutations and can even be reversed to normalcy despite the mutations. In this Commentary, we wish to present an alternate view that highlights how stochasticity in protein interaction networks (PINs) may play a key role in cancer initiation and progression. We highlight the potential role of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and submit that targeting IDPs can lead to new insights and treatment protocols for cancer. BioMed Central 2013-09-24 /pmc/articles/PMC3848908/ /pubmed/24063528 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-4598-12-108 Text en Copyright © 2013 Kulkarni et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Commentary Kulkarni, Prakash Shiraishi, Takumi Kulkarni, Rahul V Cancer: tilting at windmills? |
title | Cancer: tilting at windmills? |
title_full | Cancer: tilting at windmills? |
title_fullStr | Cancer: tilting at windmills? |
title_full_unstemmed | Cancer: tilting at windmills? |
title_short | Cancer: tilting at windmills? |
title_sort | cancer: tilting at windmills? |
topic | Commentary |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848908/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24063528 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-4598-12-108 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT kulkarniprakash cancertiltingatwindmills AT shiraishitakumi cancertiltingatwindmills AT kulkarnirahulv cancertiltingatwindmills |