The mechanisms through which a key signalling pathway regulates the progression of prostate cancer are explored in a paper published in Nature.

The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signalling pathway is important in the regulation of protein translation and is activated in many human cancers, making mTOR inhibitors a key therapeutic target.

Davide Ruggero and colleagues use a sequencing technique known as ribosome profiling to show how mTOR controls protein translation at a genome-wide level. In prostate cancer cells and in mouse prostate tumours, they find that mTOR regulates the translation of several genes involved in metastasis and cancer invasion (when cancer cells break away from the primary tumour and ‘invade’ the surrounding tissue).

The authors also report that inhibition of mTOR signalling with the inhibitor INK128 — currently in clinical trials but described fully for the first time here — reduces the progression of prostate cancers to invasive carcinomas in a mouse model.

Together, the findings further our understanding of how the ‘cancerous’ translation machinery steers specific cancer cell behaviours, including metastasis, and may be therapeutically targeted.

Source: Nature