A Protease Assay via Precolumn Derivatization and High-Performance Liquid Chromatography

Abstract

A precise balance between growth promoting signals and growth inhibitory signals plays important roles in the maintenance of healthy mammalian cells. Any deregulation of this critical balance converts normal cells into abnormal or cancerous cells. Several macromolecules are being identified and characterized that are involved in the regulation of cell signaling pathways that connect to the cell cycle and thus they play roles as tumor promoters or tumor suppressors. In situ tumor formation needs active angiogenesis, a process that generates new blood vessels from existing ones either by splitting or sprouting. Several small molecule inhibitors and proteins have been identified as inhibitors of angiogenesis. One such protein, p67/MetAP2 also known as methionine aminopeptidase 2 (MetAP2), has been shown to bind covalently to fumagillin and its derivatives that have anti-angiogenic activity. In addition to fumagillin or its derivatives, several other small molecule inhibitors of p67/MetAP2 have been recently identified and some of these drugs are in phase III trials for cancer therapy. Although molecular details of actions toward tumor suppression by these drugs are largely unknown, a significant progress has been made to understand the structure–function relationship of p67/MetAP2 and its roles in the maintenance of the levels of phosphorylation of the ∝-subunit of eukaryotic initiation factor 2 (eIF2∝) and extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1 and 2 (ERK1/2). In this article, roles of p67/MetAP2 in the suppression of cancer development are also discussed.