Another miracle! Dalian Institute of Chemistry revealed a new mechanism of liver cancer?

Recently, researchers from the Biomolecular Function and Mechanism Research Group (Group 1821) of the Dalian Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the research group of Xu Guowang from the Biomolecular High Resolution Separation Analysis and Metabolomics Research Group (Group 1808), and the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University Based on the previous research on protein ubiquitination and deubiquitination interaction (Oncogene, 2020; iScience, 2019), Professor Tan Guang's team further discovered that the deubiquitinase USP22 can regulate the synthesis of lipid metabolism in liver cancer It also revealed a new mechanism by which USP22 can promote fatty acid synthesis in liver cancer through oxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ), providing a new idea for the development of drugs targeting the lipid synthesis pathway of liver cancer

Metabolic reprogramming is an important feature of cancer

In this work, the researchers firstly analyzed the expression of USP family proteins in the pathological tissue of liver cancer, and combined metabolomics to find that the deubiquitinase USP22 has a significant correlation with liver cancer lipid synthesis; The chemical experiments and metabolite analysis further confirmed that PPARγ is an important substrate molecule of USP22 involved in liver cancer lipid metabolism

The related research results, titled "USP22 Regulates Lipidome Accumulation by Stabilizing PPARγ in Hepatocellular Carcinoma", were recently published in Nature Communications