Abstract 379: TARBP1, a member of the SPOUT methyltransferase family, is involved in human carcinogenesis

Abstract It has recently been recognized that protein methylation plays a critical role in many biological processes, and its deregulation has been observed in various kinds of diseases, including cancer. To date, a number of protein methyltransferases have already been reported to be associated with human carcinogenesis. Although many protein methyltransferases belong to the SET-domain containing protein family or the protein arginine methyltransferase (PRMT) family, a series of other methyltransferase families have also been discovered by bioinformatics-based approaches. On the contrary, physiological functions of these methyltransferases, especially, the significance in human disease like cancer, still remains unknown. In this study, we demonstrated that expression levels of TARBP1 (TAR RNA-Binding Protein 1), a member of the SPOUT methyltransferase family, are significantly up-regulated in many types of cancer tissues compared to corresponding non-tumor tissues. In addition, knockdown of TARBP1 resulted in the suppression of cancer cell growth, indicating that TARBP1 seems to regulate the proliferation of cancer cells. Since expression levels of TARBP1 in normal tissues are significantly low, TARBP1 may be a good new target for anti-cancer therapy. Citation Format: Makoto Nakakido, Yusuke Nakamura, Ryuji Hamamoto. TARBP1, a member of the SPOUT methyltransferase family, is involved in human carcinogenesis. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 379. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-379