In the article, the researchers found that the protein WWOX may play a key role in the development and progression of pancreatic cancer. When WWOX was deleted in mice, it led to the formation of precancerous lesions and pancreatic cancer. Overexpression of WWOX in human pancreatic cancer cells reduced their aggressiveness in both lab and animal studies. These findings suggest that WWOX may be a promising target for pancreatic cancer treatment and may lead to new and improved treatment modalities.
Fig. 1: Wwox deletion synergies with KrasG12D activation by accelerating neoplastic lesions formation. (A) Illustration of KWC mice generation, Ptf1a-CreER mice were crossed with Rosa26-LSL- tdTomato to generate WT mice. WT mice were crossed with Kras+/LSL-G12D mice to generate KC mice. KC mice were crossed with (Wwoxf/f) mice to generate either KWC or WC mice. (B) Immunofluorescence of tdTomato (magnification, ×40), immunostaining of WWOX and pERK respectively in KWC, and WT mice (magnification, ×20).