Judith Lieberman, MD, PhD (Damon Runyon Fellow ‘84-‘86) of the Immune Disease Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston, and colleagues, reported the first description of competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) and their function. ceRNAs comprise a complex regulatory network that controls gene expression through binding of other RNAs called microRNAs. This study demonstrated that PTEN, a tumor suppressor, is regulated by 150 ceRNAs in human prostate and colon cancer cell lines. A separate study linked ceRNA-mediated regulation of PTEN to glioblastoma brain cancer. The discovery provides a new understanding of the genetics underlying cancer. These results were published in the journal Cell.
