Work initiated by a former post doc in our lab, Fabian Schuler, was brought to completion in a concerted effort by Vincent and Gerlinde, now published in Science Advances. In their work, they could show that extra centrosomes, frequently seen in human cancer can become toxic to primary cells and promote cell death. This phenomenon in part explains the fact that extra centrosomes are selected against in murine models of blood cancer, driven by oncogenes such as MYC or vABL. Moreover, Vincent realized that in models of DNA damage driven cancer centrosome amplification even delayed cancer, constrasting current believe that these structures are primarily pro-tumorigenic. Here, the caspase-2 PIDDosome was able to sensitize lympoohatic cells to mitochondrial apoptosis, most pronounced when combined with DNA damage, leading to the inducion of rapid cell death and delayed tumor onset in a model of irradiation-driven blood cancer. Read more…..
