Abstract:
Cancer stem cells (CSC) generally acquire the features that are related to the normal stem cells. In the study of CSCs, the role of Tafazzin (TAZ) gene has been looked into in the past decade. TAZ serves to be a downstream effector in the Hippo signalling pathway and increased TAZ protein levels have been linked with several other human cancers including breast, thyroid and non-small lung cancer. TAZ has been obtaining importance very recently as studies have shown that it is over expressed in various cancers. The increase in the perception of cell biology, with respect to stem cells, has now led to the isolation of various tissue specific stem cells and identification of stemness properties in cancer cells. This paves way in the identification of several biomarkers that have the ability to convert cancer cells into CSC. TAZ generally plays a main role in clonogenicity (ability to form clones), non-adherent growth in vitro and tumor formation in vivo. The outrageous level of RNA expression of TAZ correlates with the shorter survival among colon cancer patients. Thus, it is only natural, that TAZ is strongly expressed in endothelium rich organs as the mutation of Hippo pathway, in any one of the endothelial organs, can lead to cancer. TAZ, a component of Hippo signalling pathway regulates stemness property when it is transcriptionally active. The post-translational modification of TAZ leads to phosphorylation of TAZ, thus leading to loss of stemness in the stem cells resulting in differentiation. We have studied TAZ directed mesenchymal stem cells regulation by using 9-flourenone (9F) (an inhibitor of TAZ).
