Serendipitous Discovery of a Cancer Starter

Then post-graduate student Eric Nakakura, M.D., Ph.D.,  working in the lab of Johns' Hopkins cancer biologist Barry Nelkin, was struck by how the migration of neurological cells to form the developing brain bore an uncanny similarly to the inexorable migration of invasive cells to distant sites in cancer metastasis. Today, the insight of Dr. Nakakura, now an Assistant Professor in Division of General Surgery and Surgical Oncology Program, forged with  postdoctoral fellow Chris Strock, has led to the discovery that an enzyme known as CDK5 and a pathway, RAL, play key roles in the ability of cells to migrate, form cancers and metastasize. This finding may be significant in the  development of targeted biological agents against pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal malignancies among solid organ tumors.