(June 9, 2015) A
toxin secreted by Vibrio vulnificus, a water- and food-borne bacteria that can
cause rapidly lethal infections in persons with liver disease, has potential to
prevent the growth of tumors, according to a new study by Northwestern Medicine
scientists.
Karla Satchell, PhD, professor in Microbiology-Immunology,
and her team demonstrated in a paper published in Nature Communications that a
multifunctional-autoprocessing repeats-in-toxin (MARTX) protein from Vibrio
vulnificus can inhibit tumor cell growth by cutting the protein Ras. This
protein is central to cell division and survival, and mutations in the gene
that codes for Ras are a common cause of human malignancies.