Chapter category: Cancer Metastasis

The Role of Maspin in Tumor Progression and Normal Development

This chapter appears in the following book:

Maspin

Edited by: Mary J.C. Hendrix
ISBN: 1-58706-097-3
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Chapter authors:
Ming Zhang

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Serine protease inhibitors (serpins) are comprised of a large family of molecules that play a variety of physiological roles in vivo.^1-3 Not all molecules that inhibit serine proteases are termed serpins. But all serpins have a very special protein structure and molecular weight about 400 amino acids.² Serpins exist in almost every organism, from virus to mammals.^3-5 They can be divided into two categories: inhibitory and non-inhibitory serpins. Non-inhibitory serpins, typified by ovalbumin and PEDF, do not exhibit protease inhibitor activity, but rather function as a storage protein and neural differentiation factor, respectively.^6,7 Inhibitory serpins ablate serine proteases through their functional domain-reactive site loop (RSL).² Interestingly, some inhibitory serpins have evolved other regulatory functions. For example, plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI-1) not only specifically inhibits tPA and uPA,^8,9but also regulates cell adhesion, which is independent of its protease inhibitor function, by blocking integrin a_vb₃ binding to vitronectin.^10,11 This implies that serpins not only play diverse roles as a class, but also a single serpin molecule may possess multiple functions.¹²

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Additional chapters from this book:

Maspin, a Potential Prognostic Marker for Human Cancers

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The Role of Maspin in Tumor Progression and Normal Development

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Although the novel tumor suppressor gene maspin (mammary serine protease inhibitor) was originally isolated from normal mammary epithelium by subtractive hybridization and d...

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Host cellular paracrine regulation of tumor progression is an important determinant of tumor growth, invasion and metastasis but one cell which has largely been ignored in this reg...

Maspin: Functional Insights from a Structural Perspective

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Since the seminal paper by Zou et al¹ identifying the existence of the novel tumor suppressor maspin (mammary serpin), research efforts have largely focused on the mecha...

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Discovery of a disease-related gene marks only the beginning to a series of difficult investigations. In order to establish the functional role of the newly discovered gene, one...

Ruth Sager, Geneticist

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Ruth Sager named her favorite gene Maspin, mammary serpin protease inhibitor. Expression of this gene is lost in advanced breast cancers and inhibits tumor invasion and metastas...

Chapter category: Cancer Metastasis

The Role of Maspin in Tumor Progression and Normal Development

Additional chapters from this book:

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