The most common type of lung cancer is adenocarcinoma (ADC), comprising around 40% of all lung cancer cases. In spite of achievements in understanding the pathogenesis of this disease and the development of new approaches in its treatment, unfortunately, lung ADC is still one of the most aggressive and rapidly fatal tumor types with overall survival less than 5 years. Lung ADC is often diagnosed at advanced stages involving disseminated metastatic tumors. This is particularly important for the successful development of new approaches in cancer therapy. The high resistance of lung ADC to conventional radiotherapies and chemotherapies represents a major challenge for treatment effectiveness. Here we discuss recent advances in understanding the molecular pathways driving tumor progression and related targeted therapies in lung ADCs. In addition, the cell death mechanisms induced by different treatment strategies and their contribution to therapy resistance are analyzed. The focus is on approaches to overcoming drug resistance in order to improve future treatment decisions.

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Mitochondria in addition to be a main cellular power station, are involved in the regulation of many physiological processes, such as generation of reactive oxygen species, metabolite production and the maintenance of the intracellular Ca 2+ homeostasis. Almost 100 years ago Otto Warburg presented evidence for the role of mitochondria in the development of cancer. During the past 20 years mitochondrial involvement in programmed cell death regulation has been clarified. Moreover, it has been shown that mitochondria may act as a switchboard between various cell death modalities. Recently, accumulated data have pointed to the role of mitochondria in the metastatic dissemination of cancer cells. Here we summarize the modern knowledge concerning the contribution of mitochondria to the invasion and dissemination of tumor cells and the possible mechanisms behind that and attempts to target metastatic cancers involving mitochondria.

Tudor staphylococcal nuclease (TSN, also known as Tudor-SN, SND1 or p100) is an evolutionarily conserved protein with invariant domain composition, represented by tandem repeat of staphylococcal nuclease domains and a tudor domain. Conservation along significant evolutionary distance, from protozoa to plants and animals, suggests important physiological functions for TSN. It is known that TSN is critically involved in virtually all pathways of gene expression, ranging from transcription to RNA silencing. Owing to its high protein-protein binding affinity coexistent with enzymatic activity, TSN can exert its biochemical function by acting as both a scaffolding molecule of large multiprotein complexes and/or as a nuclease. TSN is indispensible for normal development and stress resistance, whereas its increased expression is closely associated with various types of cancer. Thus, TSN is an attractive target for anti-cancer therapy and a potent tumor marker. Considering ever increasing interest to further understand a multitude of TSN-mediated processes and a mechanistic role of TSN in these processes, here we took an attempt to summarize and update the available information about this intriguing multifunctional protein. TSN is an evolutionarily conserved protein having a pivotal role in the regulation of gene expression. TSN acts both as a scaffolding protein and as a nuclease. TSN sustains cell viability and its cleavage by proteases facilitates cell death. TSN is implicated in key cancer-related processes and is a potent marker of various types of tumors. Open questions:How is nucleolytic activity of TSN regulated in vivo and how this affects interaction of TSN with downstream targets? What are the structural bases and functional consequences of distinct intracellular localization patterns of TSN in animals and plants? What are the molecular mechanisms of the TSN-mediated cancerogenesis?God has given you one face, and you make yourself another (William Shakespeare). Being true for all living organisms, accurate spatio-temporal regulation of gene expression is a fundamental mechanism underlying development, homeostasis and adaptation to the environment. Eukaryotic gene expression is a cumulative outcome of a multitude of molecular processes, including transcription, mRNA splicing, stability and translation, chromatin modification, as well as protein stability and modification. Each of these processes is in turn controlled by a highly dedicated repertoire of proteins. However, one protein, Tudor staphylococcal nuclease (TSN, also known as Tudor-SN, SND1 or p100) appears to act in most of the gene expression pathways.TSN is an evolutionarily conserved protein found in all eukaryotic lineages, except budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Conservation along significant evolutionary distance suggests important physiological functions for TSN. Invariant domain composition of TSN comprises tandem repeat of four staphylococcal nuclease (SN)-like domains (hereafter referred to as SN domains) at the N terminus and a fusio...

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