A research team led by Professor Park Seok-Hee from the Department of Biological Sciences, cooperating with the Advanced Institutes of Convergence Technology (AICT) and Gangnam Severance Hospital, discovered a new mechanism of metastasis of cancer including triplenegative breast cancer (TNBC) for the first time in the world. “We identified the fact that the A20 protein which controls inflammation and immunity causes multiple mono-ubiquitination, which is modified ubiquitin protein, of Zinc finger protein SNAI1 related to migration and infiltration of cancer cells. This means that we could find out that the A20 protein is the one that mediates metastasis of TNBC,” Professor Park said.
This achievement is highly expected to contribute to inventing a new inhibitor for metastatic breast cancer, including TNBC. Additionally, it provides theoretical fodder for developing blockers of protein interaction specifically between the A20 protein and SNAI1 or those of SNAI1’s mono-ubiquitination. The research was conducted with the support of the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Science and ICT and published in Nature Cell Biology, an authoritative journal in the field of molecular cell biology, on September 11th.