Model offers new understanding of cell signaling

Merajver’s collaborators in the study are first author Alejandra C. Ventura, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow in the U-M Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology and Comprehensive Cancer Center; and Jacques-A. Sepulchre, a mathematical physicist at the Institut Non Lineaire de Nice at the Universite de Nice Sophia-Antipolis in Valbonne, France.

The authors developed the model and tested it using experimental data from a well-known signaling pathway involved in many disease states, the MAPK pathway. They found that this kind of signaling pathway naturally transmits information not just in a forward direction, but also backwards. That implies new considerations if drugs are to adequately address key targets.

In addition, the study will enable scientists to construct models that take into account interactions between two pathways, or “cross-talk,” Merajver says.

A specialist in inflammatory breast cancer, Merajver previously has discovered oncogenes that foster metastasis. Her lab has numerous plans to put the model to work immediately.

“We hope it will broaden our understanding on how to inhibit metastasis, since our lab studies this aspect of cancer; this work has many applications for normal and disease conditions,” she says.

Citation: http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000041

Funding for the study came from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program, The Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the National Institutes of Health.

For more information, contact:

Anne Rueter, , or Nicole Fawcett, , 734-764-2220