A stress protein that is overactive in many types of tumor cells also has a key role in tumor-supporting cells called fibroblasts, and may be a good target for future cancer treatments, suggests a study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
The researchers, whose findings appear in Nature Cell Biology, discovered in experiments with mouse models of pancreatic cancer and melanoma that the stress protein, known as ATF4, enables fibroblasts to support tumor growth by promoting the formation of tumor-serving blood vessels. Deleting ATF4 in fibroblasts severely impaired new tumor-supportive vessel formation as well as tumor growth, without causing significant harm to the mice, the researchers found.
