Role in Cancer
Cyclin B plays in integral role in many types of cancer. Hyperplasia (uncontrolled cell growth) is one of the hallmarks of cancer. Because cyclin B is necessary for cells to enter mitosis and therefore necessary for cell division, cyclin B levels are often de-regulated in tumors. When cyclin B levels are elevated, cells can enter M phase prematurely and strict control over cell division is lost, which is a favorable condition for cancer development. On the other hand if cyclin B levels are depleted the cyclin B/CDK1 complex cannot form, cells cannot enter M phase and cell division slows down. Some anti-cancer therapies have been designed to prevent cyclin B/CDK1 complex formation in cancer cells to slow or prevent cell division. Most of these methods have targeted the CDK1 subunit, but there is an emerging interest in the oncology field to target cyclin B as well.
Read more about this topic: Cyclin B
Famous quotes containing the words role and/or cancer:
“The trouble is that the expression ‘material thing’ is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for ‘sense-datum’; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things which the ordinary man says that he ‘perceives.’”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)
“Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is the growth of madness denied.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)