M. Certo et al., "Mitochondria primed by death signals determine cellular addiction to anti-apoptotic BCL-2 family members," Cancer Cell, 9:351-65, 2006. (Cited in 116 papers)
Anthony Letai's team at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found an intermediate state in which cells are ready to die and need continuous anti-apoptotic protein function for survival - a state they called "primed for death." Letai used fluorescence-binding assays to show that anti-apoptotic BCL2-family proteins interact in a highly specific manner with related pro-apoptotic proteins that control apoptosis.
The paper "provided a way to sort out which interactions are important and how to make use of that information in cancer cells," says Eileen White of Rutgers University. Based on the distinct binding patterns, Letai's team used the pro-apoptotic proteins' BH3 domains to infer the subset of anti-apoptotic proteins that tumors depend on to stay alive, a strategy the authors call "BH3 profiling."
Last year, Letai's ...
