Michael Karin, distinguished professor of pharmacology and pathology at UCSD, and his team of researchers at the School of Medicine have discovered two potential targets for the prevention and treatment of colitis-associated cancer, a serious complication of inflammatory bowel disease.
Karin, who is a member of the Moores UCSD Cancer Center, was also the first researcher to demonstrate a molecular link between cancer and inflammation.
The researchers worked with mice, using genetic tools to demonstrate that a signaling molecule called Interleukin 6 is an important regulator of tumor production during the development of colitis-associated cancer, and that its molecular effects are largely mediated by the transcription factor STAT3 in cancer cells.
Patients with inflammatory bowel disease are at a higher risk of developing colorectal cancer. Almost half of individuals affected with colorectal cancer, one of the most common fatal malignancies worldwide, die from disease.
These findings, which were published in the Feb. 3 online edition of the Cancer Cell journal, were also the first to establish the cancer-promoting function of STAT3 in a validated mouse model of human cancer.
‘IL-6 fosters chronic inflammation and malignant cell survival and growth by regulating the survival of T-cells, white blood cells that direct the body’s immune system,’ Karin said.