Microscopy image showing the α-tubulin (red) and nucleus (blue) of ovarian cancer cells lacking the PARP-7 protein. Image credit: Sridevi Challa (CC BY 4.0)
Cancer is a complex illness where changes inside healthy cells causes them to grow and reproduce rapidly. Specialized proteins called enzymes – which regulate chemical reactions in the cell – often help cancer develop and spread through the body. One such enzyme called PARP-7 labels other proteins by attaching a chemical group which changes their behavior. However, it was unknown which proteins PARP-7 modifies and how this tag alters the actions of these proteins.
To investigate this, Parsons, Challa, Gibson et al. developed a method to find and identify the proteins labelled by PARP-7 in ovarian cancer cells taken from patients and cultured in the laboratory. This revealed that PARP-7 labels hundreds of different proteins, including adhesion proteins which affect the connections between cells and cytoskeletal proteins which regulate a cell’s shape and how it moves.
One of the cytoskeletal proteins modified by PARP-7 is α-tubulin, which joins together with other tubulins to form long, tube-like structures known as microtubules. Parsons et al. found that when α-tubulin is labelled by PARP-7, it creates unstable microtubules that alter how the cancer cells grow and move. They discovered that depleting PARP-7 or mutating the sites where it modifies α-tubulin increased the stability of microtubules and slowed the growth of ovarian cancer cells.
Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women in the United States. A new drug which suppresses the activity of PARP-7 has recently been developed, and this drug could potentially be used to treat ovarian cancer patients with high levels of PARP-7. Clinical trials are ongoing to see how this drug affects the behavior of cancer cells in patients.
