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Prostate cancer regulator plays role in COVID-19, providing a promising treatment lead
ANN ARBOR, Michigan By taking a lesson from prostate cancer, researchers now have a promising lead on a treatment for COVID-19.
Two proteins, ACE2 and TMPRSS2, help the coronavirus gain entry and replicate within cells. TMPRSS2 is well-known to Arul Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D. His lab discovered that TMPRSS2 fuses with the ETS gene to drive more than half of all prostate cancers. They also knew that TMPRSS2 was regulated by the androgen receptor.
So when cancer research shut down in the spring, Chinnaiyan s lab turned its attention to the coronavirus. With a grant from the National Cancer Institute, the team used its existing knowledge and resources to determine how TMPRSS2 was regulated in the lungs.