The tumor microenvironment, made up of surrounding fibroblasts, immune cells and blood vessels, is much less studied and understood than the biology of the cancerous tissue itself. It is well established that cancer controls its surrounding environment, yet the underlying mechanisms of this control remain elusive. Here Boyle et al, use a simple label free proteomics approach in the tumor secretome to identify Creld2 as the messenger of Rho-associated kinase (ROCK) induced tumour promoting activity in the microenvironment. Importantly, this identification of a key regulator of tumor microenvironment tuning has discovered a novel therapeutic tractable target for the future treatment of cancer.
The straightforward implementation and deep label free proteomics facilitated here by IonOpticks Aurora Series columns demonstrate that deep, accurate and reproducible label free proteomics is now widely available and not just limited to expert user labs.
Read the full paper
ROCK-mediated selective activation of PERK signalling causes fibroblast reprogramming and tumour progression through a CRELD2-dependent mechanism.
Nature Cell Biology, 2020. pp.1-14. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-020-0523-y
Boyle ST, Poltavets V, Kular J, Pyne NT, Sandow JJ, Lewis AC, Murphy KJ, Kolesnikoff N, Moretti PAB, Tea MN, Tergaonkar V, Timpson P, Pitson SM, Webb AI, Whitfield RJ, Lopez AF, Kochetkova M, Samuel MS
Commentary by Andrew Webb, PhD.
About the author
Andrew has over 15 years’ experience in the field of chromatography and mass spectrometry. He is the lead innovator and inventor at IonOpticks, working closely with the team to test, refine and develop cutting edge techniques to support higher quality outputs and analytics from MS instruments. Andrew is also the Lab Head of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research’s Proteomics Research Laboratory.
