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The research team studied a protein called Smoothened that plays vital roles in healthy tissue and organ development. However, when Smoothened becomes overactive, it can trigger the formation and spread of brain and skin tumors. Blocking Smoothened can stop cancer from spreading, but eventually tumors adapt, making this approach ineffective. Medulloblastoma is the most common pediatric brain tumor in the U.S., and basal cell carcinoma is the most common cancer in the U.S. with about 3.6 million cases every year.

Smoothened is part of a signaling pathway in the body. A signaling pathway is like a telephone wire that runs from the cell surface to the interior of the cell. The messages that travel along that wire provide instructions to the cell.

“We knew the ‘telephone wire’ existed but we had no idea how it worked. That has left a big gap in our ability to turn it off therapeutically to treat cancer,” Myers says. “The hope is that by better understanding it, cancer drugs will become far more effective.”

These findings explain how Smoothened gets switched on at a molecular level and what the transmitted signal is.

Myers says the undergraduate biology students who worked in his lab were pivotal to this discovery. He’d also like to acknowledge key trainees John Happ, Corvin Arveseth, and Isaac Nelson, as well as the postdoctoral students essential in his research. Key collaborators include Susan Taylor, PhD, �㽶��Ƶ of California, San Diego, Friedrich Herberg, PhD, �㽶��Ƶ of Kassel, Germany, and Gianluigi Veglia, PhD, �㽶��Ƶ of Minnesota. 

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and Huntsman Cancer Foundation.