Investigators led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Kimberly Stegmaier, MD, have discovered that knocking out a protein regulator in Ewing sarcoma cells causes the tumor cells to die from an overdose of a cancer-promoting protein. The regulator, a protein known as TRIM8, is critical to the survival of Ewing sarcoma cells because it controls the levels of EWS/FLI, a cancer protein or oncoprotein, which drives malignancy in the great majority of Ewing tumors.
Stegmaier, a pediatric oncologist, and lead investigator of the study in Cancer Cell, says TRIM8 is a “very, very exciting” potential target for drug therapy in Ewing sarcoma, a rare cancer found in the bone or soft tissue of teenagers and young adults.
