Bcl, Bax, EGFR, Ras, CDK, pINK...the proteins involved in cancer seem like an alphabet soup.  But yesterday the Chemistry of Cancer class highlighted what they've about the genes and proteins associated with cancer.

In the 1970's, President Nixon declared "war on cancer", and the search for a "magic bullet" began.  As we've learned more about how cells sense their environment and decide to grow (or commit "cellular suicide"), we've also learned that cancer is not a single disease, so there isn't a single cure.  For a cell to become cancerous, there must be at least mutations in two different types of proteins--one to trigger inappropriate cell growth, as well as the loss of a growth repressor.  These mutations usually occur in proteins involved in one of three main processes in the cell:  signal transduction, which is the way the cell senses environmental cues to grow; the cell cycle, which is the process by which a cell divides into two daughter cells; and apoptosis, or programmed cell death of cells with problems in their DNA replication or other stages of cell division.

The ten members of the class each focused on a single protein involved in cancer.  They developed a Proteopedia page, highlighting both the structure and function of their proteins.  They presented their results yesterday at lunch.

Their findings are also available to the wider scientific audience through the pages they authored on Proteopedia.  If you'd like to learn more about their projects, visit the class Proteopedia page.