I am a fan of Joan Massague's work. I have read every paper his lab has published in the last few year. His lab is like a Nature paper producing machine that spits 'em out every couple of months. Agreed, they use the same damn system in every paper. Same nude mice tumor studies, using the same MDA-MB231 cell line (or its various metastatic variants), same BLI..everything is the same. Except they study a different gene, a different target in each paper. Ah..what it means to have resources at your disposal! And a super system set up in your lab. (As a relatively junior grad student in a very new lab I feel all the disadvantages of having to set up a system myself.)
His latest offering is a nicely done paper on the role of MiRNAs in limiting breast cancer metastasis. MiRNAs are, of course, the flavor of the month. The whole RNA field has exploded with the advent of siRNA and miRNA. Especially, now that MiRNAs have been found to regulate practically every physiological process there is. There is a problem with the study of MiRNAs...its very hard to conclusively prove that a particular gene is regulated by a specific miRNA because every miRNA regulates 100s of genes. Given that there is just a 7nt specific sequence regulating miRNA binding to the 3' UTRs of their target genes, specificity is a major issue. The knockdown approach doesn't cut it, IMHO. If you can rescue..thats OK..but still not good enough.
Of late, genomics has been the way to go. With people's personal genomes getting sequenced, the future is ripe with the possibility of being able to tailor treatment for diseases(in this case breast cancer) based on individual variations and mutations. Massague's paper scores big in being able to show the variations in his miRNA's variation in expression level in metastatic vs. non-metastatic breast cancers and also associating this with patient survival rates. Except for the odd result or 2, by and large, its a great paper. Whether the target genes he showed in his paper are actually responsible for the repression of metastasis, is still a question in my mind. But they definitely showed that the miRNAs in question have an effect on metastasis. So..tres cool. Made my day.
His latest offering is a nicely done paper on the role of MiRNAs in limiting breast cancer metastasis. MiRNAs are, of course, the flavor of the month. The whole RNA field has exploded with the advent of siRNA and miRNA. Especially, now that MiRNAs have been found to regulate practically every physiological process there is. There is a problem with the study of MiRNAs...its very hard to conclusively prove that a particular gene is regulated by a specific miRNA because every miRNA regulates 100s of genes. Given that there is just a 7nt specific sequence regulating miRNA binding to the 3' UTRs of their target genes, specificity is a major issue. The knockdown approach doesn't cut it, IMHO. If you can rescue..thats OK..but still not good enough.
Of late, genomics has been the way to go. With people's personal genomes getting sequenced, the future is ripe with the possibility of being able to tailor treatment for diseases(in this case breast cancer) based on individual variations and mutations. Massague's paper scores big in being able to show the variations in his miRNA's variation in expression level in metastatic vs. non-metastatic breast cancers and also associating this with patient survival rates. Except for the odd result or 2, by and large, its a great paper. Whether the target genes he showed in his paper are actually responsible for the repression of metastasis, is still a question in my mind. But they definitely showed that the miRNAs in question have an effect on metastasis. So..tres cool. Made my day.
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