Abstract Formatting Sheet
(Please send all abstracts via email as attached documents)

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2. - Abstract Title
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4. - Institution Name
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2.	Role of protein phosphatase 2A in lung cancer
3.	Walter, Gernot

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4.	University of California at San Diego

5.	Smoking causes lung cancer through mutation of genes that are involved in controlling the growth of lung cells. Two classes of genes are important in growth control: (1) Genes that stimulate growth (oncogenes), and (2) genes that inhibit growth (tumor suppressor genes). The former become activated by mutation whereas the latter become inactivated. In most cancers, including lung cancer, mutation of both types of genes contributes to the development of cancer. 

For many years, our laboratory has investigated a type of protein that facilitates metabolic processes, i.e., an enzyme. In particular, we are interested in the enzyme known as protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A). PP2A controls the function of other proteins by removing phosphate residues from the amino acids serine and threonine. PP2A is composed of three different protein components (or subunits) that are called A, B, and C. One form of A subunit, called Ab, was recently found to be mutated or deleted in lung and colon cancer cells, suggesting that Ab plays a role as tumor suppressor in lung and colon cancer. Our hypothesis is that mutations in the Ab subunit destroy its tumor suppressing activity of protein phosphatase 2A by abolishing the interaction between Ab and the other two subunits B and C. To test this hypothesis, we will carry out binding experiments with normal and mutated Ab, B, and C subunits using assays that were previously developed in our laboratory. 

Our work is relevant to lung cancer, in particular since it is highly likely that smoking causes mutations in the Ab subunit resulting in loss of the tumor suppressing function of PP2A. It is conceivable that, based on our proposed studies, drugs can be found that revert the effect of Ab mutations in lung and colon cancer; i.e., drugs that bind to Ab mutant-containing core enzyme and exert the same effect on enzyme activity as the tumor suppressing B subunit. Since we are dealing with an enzyme, searching for drugs in a natural product or synthetic compound library is a worthwhile and realistic goal. 

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