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Signaling Pathways in Neurological Cancers

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Interdisciplinary Cancer Research

Abstract

Neural cancer is among the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat malignancies. There are over 100 subtypes of brain tumors, which make this type of malignancy even more important. Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most important group among them. It is associated with a high rate of mortality. Due to some difficulties to reach the tumor for surgeons and inefficient penetration of medical therapies into the blood-brain barrier, it is critical to have some more effective and specific treatments for those patients. One approach could be targeting the signaling pathways which are involved in this type of cancer. Most of these pathways are essential for regular proliferation and differentiation of cells; however, due to some mutations in one or some of the downstream proteins in the pathways, they become out of control, which leads to uncontrolled cell proliferation. Additionally, some proteins of these pathways could interact with each other through different mechanisms. For example, Naked cuticle 1 (NKD1) acts as a negative regulator of the Wnt signaling pathway. In this chapter, we have covered the most important signaling pathways involved in neural cancers, including Wnt-related signaling cascades which is a key cascade regulating development, pathways related to tumor suppressors (e.g., p53), those associated with proto-oncogenes (e.g., PI3K/Akt Signaling), NF-kB-related pathways, as well as JAK-STAT signaling cascades.

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The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

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Correspondence to Nima Rezaei .

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© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Akhlaghdoust, M., Tavakolpour, S., Davoodi, P., Rahmani, S., Zali, A., Rezaei, N. (2022). Signaling Pathways in Neurological Cancers. In: Interdisciplinary Cancer Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/16833_2022_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/16833_2022_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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