BioCentury
ARTICLE | Distillery Therapeutics

Cancer

December 22, 2016 12:45 AM UTC

Patient sample, cell culture and mouse studies suggest inhibiting USP13 could help treat ovarian cancer. In patient samples, levels of USP13 were higher in tumors than in adjacent normal ovarian tissue, and tumor levels of USP13 correlated with disease progression in the patients. In five human ovarian cancer cell lines, USP13 knockdown decreased proliferation compared with normal USP13 expression. In two xenograft mouse models of ovarian cancer, tumor-specific knockdown of USP13 decreased tumor growth. In one of the models, tumor-specific USP13 knockdown plus the AKT inhibitor MK-2206 decreased tumor growth compared with either strategy alone. Next steps include identifying and testing USP13 inhibitors in the models...