Dr. Josep Clotet, Director of the UIC Barcelona's Basic Sciences Department, recently spent a month at the Gordon Center for Integrative Science in Chicago doing research on the relationship between cancer and newly discovered kinds of cyclin. The trip formed part of the larger context of the year-long collaboration between Dr. Clotet, Dr. Miguel Ángel Carrasco and Dr. Stephen Kron that began when the three scholars published a joint article on the analysis of tumours.
Their research is financed by the Gordon Center and the 2012 TV3 Telethon on cancer, which awarded the UIC Barcelona €81,875 for cancer research. The researchers hope to use proteomic techniques to better analyse cancer as they seek out new indicators that will make more accurate cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment possible.
Researchers from Dr. Clotet’s team will travel to the Gordon Center for a period of two years to analyse samples from cancer patients participating in the study.
The research that Dr. Clotet’s team has been conducting since 2009 is focused on new cyclins. Classic cyclins (E, D, A and B) are proteins that control the different phases of the eukaryotic cell cycle. They are deregulated in most cancers. Some years ago, detailed human genome analysis led to the discovery of new proteins with increased homology to classic cyclins. But most of the questions surrounding these so-called new cyclins remain unanswered. What bodily processes do they regulate? Under what conditions are they necessary? How do they go out of control? Are they altered in neoplastic cells as well? These and other questions open up a world of new possibilities for cancer researchers.
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