Croatian-Austrian Bilateral Project Success
RBI scientists Neda Slade, PhD, and Arijana Zorić, PhD, from the Laboratory of Molecular Oncology, Department of Molecular Medicine in collaboration with colleagues from the Medical Faculty at Innsbruck and the Medical School in Vienna published an article in the prestigious journal Oncogene. Their work is the result of successful cooperation on the Croatian-Austrian bilateral project 'The importance of dominant negative izoforms p73 for the sensitivity to chemo therapeutics'.
This important study describes new variants of the well known tumor suppressor p53. In addition to previously described isoforms, the authors uncovered that novel variants exist of yet unknown function. These novel variants were shown to be present in 18 out of 34 (52,9%) ovarian cancer cell lines, as well as in 134 out of 245 (54,7%) of primary ovarian tumors. While the molecular function of these new variants is unknown it was shown that some of them are correlated with poorer response to chemotherapy and therefore represents a prognostic marker for recurrence and overall increased morbidity. The status of the p73 gene was also determined in these ovarian cancer cell lines and tumor tissues and the results indicate that in samples carrying a functional p53, the dominant negative isoform of ΔN'p73is expressed which confirms the hypothesis that expression of this isoform facilitates selective pressure for mutations of p53.
