Murnane Lab Identifies MMP Activity Indicating Colorectal Cancer

For more than 20 years, researchers from BUSM, under the direction of Mary Jo Murnane, have been working to identify and characterize markers that can either diagnose cancer at an early stage or better predict cancer outcomes. Such tumor markers may also prove useful in the design of new cancer therapies.

The International Journal of Cancer has published a paper by Dr. Murnane and colleagues that describes three different enzyme activities, called matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), in patient-matched sets of normal colon and colorectal cancer tissues. They found that one particular MMP activity is particularly accurate in determining the presence of colorectal cancer. These observations may encourage the design of a cancer therapy that targets this specific MMP activity. Detection of this same marker in other types of tissues may also lead to better detection of lung, pancreatic, thyroid or breast cancers.

This work was a collaborative effort among many individuals, including surgeons, pathologists, researchers, graduate students and statisticians. In addition, the work was critically dependent on cancer patients who contributed tissue samples for study. Funding for this research was provided by the National Institutes of Health and by the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation.