The role of driver protein neighbors in cancer development

What is it about?

Groups of physically interacting proteins perform many cellular functions. When one protein is changed by a mutation, as it happens in cancer, that protein malfunction influences neighbor proteins too. Therefore, the consequence of a protein mutation can be different according to which neighbor proteins are present in each tissue. We analysed molecular data of cancer patients to identify proteins that physically interact with cancer driver proteins and have higher expression when the driver protein is mutated or the reverse (lower expression when the driver is mutated). The analyses done in this work support that these neighbor proteins may influence the disease outcome in patients with mutations in the interacting drivers.

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Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The protein neighbors, for which we identified associations with driver mutations, contribute to explaining why each cancer type is typically associated with specific driver genes. Each cancer type originates in a different tissue or cell type, expressing different subsets of proteins. A driver gene mutation will only lead to cancer development in the context of favourable protein interactions. Moreover, these protein neighbors can be potential drug targets for personalized therapies. Developing drugs to degrade neighbors that enhance the tumorigenic effect of interacting driver mutations can be a therapeutic strategy for patients having such driver mutations.

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