Supported by an operating grant from the Canadian Institute of Health Research the first study, now published online and to appear in print on June 9, showed that calpain promoted programmed cell death after cells were damaged by chemicals that disrupt the endoplasmic reticulum, which is a major synthetic structure in the cell that controls the synthesis and distribution of new proteins.
In the second study, now published in JBC online, Dr. Greer and co-investigators Yinfei Tan, Chao Wu, and Teresa De Veyra, found that calpain also inhibits programmed cell death in response to other challenges, including some chemotherapeutic drugs.
This study showed that calpain contributes to the activation of AKT and JNK, two key players in the signaling pathways that control cellular responses to different death stimuli. These discoveries suggest that calpain inhibitors might improve the ability of chemotherapeutic drugs or radiation treatment to specifically kill tumour cells in cancer patients.
(source:eurekalert)