Credit: The Wistar Institute
PHILADELPHIA and MELBOURNE, Australia (May. 17, 2021) A team of scientists from The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in Melbourne, Australia, discovered a new checkpoint mechanism that fine-tunes gene transcription. As reported in a study published in
Cell, a component of the Integrator protein complex tethers the protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) to the site of transcription allowing it to stop the activity of the RNA polymerase II enzyme (RNAPII). Disruption of this mechanism leads to unrestricted gene transcription and is implicated in cancer.
The study points to new viable opportunities for therapeutic intervention demonstrating the anti-cancer effect of a new combination treatment in preclinical models of solid and hematopoietic malignancies.