N-myristoyltransferase: A potential novel diagnostic marker for colon cancer
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BioMed Central
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N-myristoyltransferase: A potential novel diagnostic marker for colon cancer Anuraag Shrivastav1,2, Shailly Varma3, Anurag Saxena1, John DeCoteau1,2 and Rajendra K Sharma*1 Address: 1Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada S7N 5E5, 2Health Research Division, Saskatchewan Cancer Agency, Saskatoon, Canada S7N 4H4 and 3Department of Biochemistry, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada S7N 5E5 Email: Anuraag Shrivastav - [email protected]; Shailly Varma - [email protected]; Anurag Saxena - [email protected]; John DeCoteau - [email protected]; Rajendra K Sharma* - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 16 November 2007 Journal of Translational Medicine 2007, 5:58
doi:10.1186/1479-5876-5-58
Received: 14 September 2007 Accepted: 16 November 2007
This article is available from: http://www.translational-medicine.com/content/5/1/58 © 2007 Shrivastav et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Background: Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the western world. If detected early, colorectal cancer is one of the most treatable forms of cancer. Unfortunately, very few people are screened. N-myristoyltransferase (NMT) catalyzes myristoylation of various proteins including oncoproteins. We have demonstrated earlier the alteration of NMT activity during the progression of colorectal cancer and established NMT as a putative therapeutic target for cancer. Methods: Peripheral blood samples and bone marrow were collected from the colon cancer patients and azoxymethane induced colonic tumor rats and their controls respectively. NMT activity and expression was determined as reported earlier. Immunohistochemical studies were carried out using standard procedures. Results: In this study we demonstrate for the first time altered expression and localization of NMT in the peripheral blood and bone marrow in colon cancer patients. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed weak to negative staining for NMT in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of controls, whereas strong positivity was observed in PBMC colon cancer patients. In addition, we observed that NMT was localized mostly in the nuclei of the bone marrow (BM) mononuclear cells of the colon cancer patients, whereas NMT remained cytoplasmic in the control bone marrow specimens. Conclusion: The strikingly different NMT expression offers the basis of a potential adjunct investigative tool for screening or diagnosis of patients at risk for or suspected of having colon cancer. Furthermore, altered localization of NMT in BM of tumor bearing hosts may serve as an added investigative tool for the diagn
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