A new cancer study has shown that loss of a protein responsible for hooking skin cells together could be an early development of skin cancer.

Stanford University School of Medicine researchers said the depletion of a protein called Perp, could help them establish prognoses. It could be useful in helping identify tumors in internal organs; early diagnosis could lead to effective and timely treatment.

Perp was first identified in the late 1990’s by Attardi and in 2005, showed Perp is an integral part of desmosomes. Together with her associates were able to produce mice lacking the protein, helping them identify the role played by Perp in skin.

They exposed normal mice plus bioengineered mice that are Perp-deficient to a level of distinct ultraviolet wavelengths called UVB light, that induce the vast majority of skin cancers on humans. They then compared the occurrence of carcinoma squamous-cell within both groups.

The found tumors on the skin arose quickly and were more aggressive and abundant in mice lacking Perp as compared to within normal mice thus leading to skin cancer.

The observed Perp loss promoted cancer in 3 ways, through inflammatory molecule overproduction, increased cells survival meant to be dead as an obvious reaction to UVB excesses as well as cell-cell adhesion loss to commensurate with obvious desmosomes loss.

Complexes identified in cancer later times were found present and functioning as usual in basically all samples, thereby supporting the observed fact that loss of desmosome as a result of Perp inactivation could be a very early and crucial moment in the progress of cancer.

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