THE REGULATION OF P53 FUNCTION - STEINER-AWARD LECTURE
THE REGULATION OF P53 FUNCTION - STEINER-AWARD LECTURE
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DOI:
10.1002/ijc.2910570502
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发表时间:
1994-06-01
影响因子:
6.4
通讯作者:
LANE, DP
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
LANE, DP
Thep53 tumour suppressor gene acts to prevent the development of cancer (Donehower et al., 1992). It does so as “the guardian of the genome”(Lane, 1992) by blocking the division of cells that have sustained DNA damage and in some cases triggering cell death by apoptosis (Lane, 1993). This function ofp53 must often be rate limiting as inactivation ofp53 is one of the most common molecular steps in the development of cancer (Hollstein et al., 1991). Study of the regulation ofp53 function has shown that the protein is controlled by at least 3 general mechanisms. The first is a post-translational regulation of the protein’s half-life (Maltzman and Czyzyk, 1984), the second is by the binding of specific viral and host proteins (Lane and Crawford, 1979; Sarnow et al., 1982; Scheffner et al., 1990) and the third is a form of allosteric regulation brought about by post-translational modification (Hupp et al., 1992). A full understanding of the operation of these mechanisms will lead the way forward to the clinical application of novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches based on thep53 system.THE DISCOVERY OF p53; VIRUS-HOST INTERACTIONS The pS3 protein was first identified through its ability to form a tight, stable complex with the SV40 large T antigen (Lane and Crawford, 1979). The large T antigen is a multifunctional protein that has a potent capacity to transform a wide range of vertebrate cells and also acts to initiate viral DNA replication (Rigby and Lane, 1983; Fried and Prives, 1986). When we originally identified the complex using immunochemical methods we speculated that p53 “might act as a regulator of certain cellular functions related to growth control and itself be neutralised by binding to T antigen”(Lane and Crawford, 1979). There is now clear biological and biochemical evidence to support this idea since large T can block the action of pS3 as a DNA-binding protein and as a transcription factor (Mietz et al., 1992). Large T also acts to block the growth arrest and apoptotic functions of p53. These effects may be very beneficial for a DNA virus as they will allow viral replication to proceed without inducing a cell suicide response and thus increase viral yield. Not surprisingly then other viruses may have also developed strategies which act to neutralise p53 function. The adenovirus E1B 55 kDa protein can also bind and neutralise p53 (Kao et al., 1990; Berk and Yew, 1992) as can the E6 gene product of the high-risk human papilloma virus serotypes (Mietz et al., 1992). Some enigmas remain unresolved, however; for example, the polyoma virus large T protein does not bind to p53, and it is as yet quite unclear how this highly related Papova virus deals with the p53 pathway (Manfredi and Prives, 1993). These protein-protein interactions that modulate p53 function have taken on fresh significance with my colleague Dr. A. Levine’s discovery of a cellular p53-binding protein, MDM2, that can, like the viral proteins, bind and neutralise p53 (Momand et al., 1992; Olson et al., 1993). The binding sites for these viral and cellular proteins on p35 are being analysed in great detail using antibodies, mutational analyses and synthetic peptide approaches. This has allowed us to identify antibodies that can block or even reverse these protein interactions (Lane and Gannon, 1986; Gannon and Lane, 1990), and such agents may act as models for the development of novel therapeutic compounds. This is of particular importance in human cancers associated with papilloma virus E6 protein expression since disruption of the E6-p53 interaction might restore p53 function to these tumour cells in a very specific manner.