Abstract
Malignant features—such as sustained proliferation, refractoriness to growth suppressors, resistance to cell death or aberrant motility, and metastasis—can be triggered by a variety of mutations and signaling adaptations. Signaling nodes can act as cancer-associated factors by cooperating with oncogene-governed pathways or participating in compensatory transduction networks to strengthen tumor properties. G-protein–coupled receptor kinase 2 (GRK2) is arising as one of such nodes. Via its complex network of connections with other cellular proteins, GRK2 contributes to the modulation of basic cellular functions—such as cell proliferation, survival, or motility—and is involved in metabolic homeostasis, inflammation, or angiogenic processes. Moreover, altered GRK2 levels are starting to be reported in different tumoral contexts and shown to promote breast tumorigenesis or to trigger the tumoral angiogenic switch. The ability to modulate several of the hallmarks of cancer puts forward GRK2 as an oncomodifier, able to modulate carcinogenesis in a cell-type specific way.
Footnotes
- Received October 12, 2016.
- Accepted November 23, 2016.
Our laboratory is funded by grants from Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain (SAF2014-55511R), the European Union (H2020-MSCA Programme, Grant agreement 64183-ONCORNET), the CIBER-Cardiovascular Network of Instituto Carlos III (CB16/11/00278) to F.M., and Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI14-00435,PIE-13-00041) to P.P, and Fundación Ramón Areces to our institution.
- Copyright © 2017 by The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
MolPharm articles become freely available 12 months after publication, and remain freely available for 5 years.Non-open access articles that fall outside this five year window are available only to institutional subscribers and current ASPET members, or through the article purchase feature at the bottom of the page.
|