Progestin‐Induced Fatty Acid Synthetase in Breast Cancer. From Molecular Biology to Clinical Applications^a

Increased lipogenesis in cancer cells: new players, novel targets

“…These proteins interact with SCAP and regulate the retention of the SCAP protein and the SREBP precursor in the endoplasmic reticulum [19]. Recently, it was shown that androgens affect the SREBP pathway in prostate cancer in vivo [46] and also that progestagens and estrogens may stimulate lipogenic gene expression in cancer cells [20,47,48 ]. The finding that steroid hormones enhance lipogenic gene expression in cancer cells is of particular interest as common tumors frequently originate in organs that are dependent on steroid hormones.…”

“…SREBP-1 is a key lipogenic transcription factor that also mediates the lipogenic effects of insulin in normal liver and adipose tissue and is activated by proteolytic processing [18]. In steroid-responsive cancers, steroid hormones further enhance fatty acid synthesis [19,20], in part by modulating the expression of regulatory molecules controlling this proteolytic activation (reviewed in [19]). Pharmacological and small interference RNA-mediated inhibition of FAS markedly decreases the synthesis of phospholipids, suggesting that the high level of lipogenesis in cancer cells mainly serves the synthesis of membranes [7, 21,22,23 ].…”

Fatty Acid Synthase Hyperactivation in Human Colorectal Cancer: Relationship with Tumor Side and Sex

“…Biochemical studies of FAS activity and fatty acid synthesis in colon cancer cells have shown that its levels of expression correlate with the overall activity of the fatty acid synthetic pathway [7, 14, 15]. …”