Association between Notch signaling pathway and cancer

Abstract

Background. The components of the Notch signaling pathway are important in maintaining the balance involved in cell proliferation, apoptosis and differentiation. Therefore, dysfunction of the Notch prevents differentiation, ultimately guiding undifferentiated cells toward malignant transformation. The aim of this article is to present recently published data concerning the role of the Notch signaling pathway components in development and prognosis of oncologic diseases, in occurrence of resistance to cytostatic agents and importance in creating of new cancer treatment approaches. Materials and methods. The Pubmed was the main source of looking for information for this article. Results. Recent investigations show that disorders of the Notch signaling pathway are associated with development of some human haematological and solid cancers. In different tissues and organs this active pathway can act as a tumor suppressor or an oncogene. Accordingly, the increased or decreased expression of its components is defined. Most of published data show that the increased expression of Notch pathway components correlates with a worse prognosis of cancer and a shorter survival. Recently, the Notch pathway has been reported to be involved in drug resistance. The modulation of the Notch signaling pathway could be helpful in treatment of some tumors with abnormal activity of this pathway’s components. Therefore changes in the expression of Notch components could become important predictive factors, helpful in selecting the proper treatment method. Conclusions. The results of recent studies are very important, since the detecting of the prognostic and predictive value of components of the Notch signaling pathway can allow creating new and improving already known methods of cancer diagnostic and treatment.

Identification of shared and unique susceptibility pathways among cancers of the lung, breast, and prostate from genome-wide association studies and tissue-specific protein interactions

“…In order to avoid misrepresenting cancer risk pathway trends due to the presence of redundant pathways, we removed Reactome pathways that have largely similar protein members (see Methods). These trends are consistent with cancer progression findings in the experimental literature (51)(52)(53)(54)(55)(56)(57)(58)(59)(60)(61)(62)(63)(64).…”

“…Overall, the majority of associated pathways (74 out of 80 total pathways in Table 3) exhibit some involvement in the development of at least one cancer type (51)(52)(53)(54)(55)(56)(57)(58)(59)(60)(61)(62)(63)(64). Moreover, we identified associations between metabolism regulation and breast cancer and between platelet signaling and prostate cancer that are in agreement with results from ex vivo studies (75,76,78,80,81), but that have not been detected in previous cancer GWAS analyses.…”

Anticancer properties of phospholipase A2 from Daboia siamensis venom on human skin melanoma cells

“…The Notch signaling pathway plays an important role in balance on the cell proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis pathways. Dysfunction in Notch pathway is connected with tumor mutagenesis in various tissues [ 12 , 13 , 30 ]. When those genes were blocked, the characteristic cell death would appear and dssPLA 2 might be useful in treatment of this cancer.…”

“…For example, down regulation of Notch1 provoked inhibition of cell growth and apoptosis in cancer cells [ 10 , 11 ]. In contrast, the increased expression of Notch components was associated with a worse prognosis for cancer and a shorter survival rate [ 13 ]. Synthetic substances and natural products have been studied in order to find a melanoma inhibitor concerning this gene.…”

“…Notch and their ligands are abundantly expressed in the epidermis, either as an oncogene or as a tumor suppressor on melanoma and non-melanoma [ 12 ]. The importance of Notch signaling pathway in determining the outcome of treatment has been reported [ 13 ]. Both BRAF V600E mutation and Notch signaling pathway should be studied as bioactive agents against melanoma.…”