Abstract
The type III TGF-β receptor has potential therapeutic and prognostic potential in breast cancer.
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The finding highlighted by the work of Pang et al. (2014) supports and extends work done at the RNA level showing that lower expression of the type III TGF-β receptor (TBR3), or β-glycan predicts a poor outcome and increased invasiveness of breast cancer. TBR3 acts as a co-receptor for TGFβ isoforms. Although at first seemingly counter-intuitive, a possible clarifying mechanism for this observation was suggested in the discussion that TBR3 can undergo ectodomain shedding, and thereby act as a decoy receptor. This notion is interesting and suggests that development of a TBR3 mimetic could possibly be considered as a breast cancer therapeutic.
References
Pang JC, Virani NK, Kidwell KM (2014) Characterization of type III TGF-β receptor expression in invasive breast carcinomas: a potential new marker and target for triple negative breast cancer. J Cell Commun Signal 8:211–218
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Trackman, P.C. An interesting perspective on a well-studied pathway: does type III TGF-Β receptor have therapeutic potential?. J. Cell Commun. Signal. 9, 103 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12079-015-0284-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12079-015-0284-8