An international research team led by CCS associate member Prof. Lukas Kenner (Medical University of Vienna, Austria) in collaboration with the CCS lab of the Aberger group has identified a novel tumor suppressor function of the STAT3 transcription factor in metastatic prostate cancer (mPCa) development.
The team showed that simultaneous loss of Pten and Stat3 function drives mPCa development by lowering Lkb1/pAMPK and inducing mTorc1/Creb signaling. In contrast, conditional activation of Stat3 prevented metastasis via Lkb1/AMPK activation, as did treatment with the approved diabetes drug metformin, a known activator of AMPK signaling. The study identifies promising new targets for the treatment of lethal metastatic PCa and has been published in the leading cancer journal Molecular Cancer (Impact Factor: 37.3). Click here to read the full story by Pencik et al., Mol. Cancer. 2023)