“Exracellular Protein Sensitizes Ovarian Cancer Cells to Chemotherapy”

The article “Exracellular Protein Sensitizes Ovarian Cancer Cells to Chemotherapy” reports that scientists have uncovered critical new details about the mechanisms that modulate the response of ovarian cancer cells to chemotherapy. The research, published by Cell Press, helps to explain why many patients develop resistance to the taxane class of drugs and may lead to improve treatment of ovarian cancer. Taxanes are produced from natural resources and some have been synthesized artificially. Taxanes have been used to produce various chemotherapy drugs, and the principal mechanism of taxanes is the disruption of microtubule function, which serve as structural components within cells and are involved in many cellular processes including mitosis, cytokinesis, and vesicular transport. Cancer cells grow and divide rapidly and undergo extensive microtubule-driven restructuring as they proliferate. Taxanes are used to interfere with the dynamic growth of microtubules and undergo extensive microtubule-driven restructuring as they proliferate. Researchers have performed experiments in which they explore the connection between regulation of microtubules and taxane resistance. Dr. James D. Brenton from the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute in Cambridge, England and colleagues performed an examination of ovarian cancer in which they tested the transforming growth factor beta, which is a protein that controls proliferation, cellular differentiation, and other functions in most cells. It plays a role in immunity, cancer, heart disease. Their results identified TGFBI as an ECM protein that induces microtubule stability and modulates sensitivity to paclitaxel in ovarian cell lines and in patients receiving paclitaxel therapy. It is now possible that TGFBI could be used as a biomarker for selecting patients likely to respond to taxane therapy. This article is important to what we are doing now in class because it links to cells and cellular processes. It is also very important because it is closer to helping those who have cancer. I liked this article because it was well written and descriptive. It was a little difficult to keep up with because of many of the terms used, and I had to search a lot of things to understand it, but other than that I really enjoyed it.