Researchers in the US have figured out a way to turn pancreatic cancer cells back into normal healthy cells in mice by introducing a protein that’s responsible for the regulation of proper cell growth and differentiation.
Named E47, this protein belongs to the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) family of proteins, which bind to another type of protein, called dimerize, and then to specific regions of DNA to help regulate the activity of certain genes. Some types of bHLH proteins can be used to repress certain genes, and others to activate them, so the team from the University of Sanford-Burnham decided to engineer human pancreatic cancer cells with a capacity for increased E47 production to see what would happen. Turns out, these cells were able to halt the growth of the pancreatic cancer, and revert them back into normal non-cancerous cells.