The mechanisms by which tissue size is controlled are poorly understood. Over 30 years ago, Bullough proposed the existence of chalones, which act as tissue-specific negative growth regulators. The recent discovery of myostatin suggests that negative regulation of tissue growth may be an important mechanism for controlling skeletal muscle mass and raises the possibility that growth inhibitors m...

The ErbB RTKs (EGFR, HER2, HER3, and HER4) have been well-studied in cancer. EGFR, HER3 stimulate cancer proliferation, principally by activating the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) pathways, resulting increased cell survival proliferation. Cancer cells high densities of causing phosphorylation tyrosine amino acids on protein substrates near C-terminal ...

Arsenic trioxide (ATO; As2O3) induces cell death in various types of cancer cells including lung cancer via increasing reactive oxygen species (ROS) and regulating mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling cascades. However, little is known about the relationship between ATO and MAPK signaling in normal lung cells. Here, we investigated th...

Numerous cellular processes, such as signal transduction and protein transport, are regulated through protein-protein interactions1). To reveal the roles of these interactions in vivo, it is important to investigate the effect of inhibition of each protein-protein interaction. Small molecule inhibitors of protein-protein interactions are useful for such purposes, but only a few inhibitors have ...

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is associated with pronounced fibrosis that contributes to chemoresistance, in part, through increased histone acetylation. Because bromodomain (BRD) and extra terminal domain (BET) proteins are "readers" of histone acetylation marks, we targeted BET proteins in PDAC cells grown in three-dimensional collagen. We show that treatment with BET inhibitors dec...