Caveolin in breast cancer

Abstract
Caveolin-1 is the principle structural protein of caveolae, sphingolipid and cholesterolrich invaginations of the plasma membrane involved in vesicular trafficking and signal transduction. During caveolae-dependent signaling, caveolin-1 acts as a scaffold protein to sequester and organize multi-molecular signaling complexes involved in diverse cellular activities and as such serves as a paradigm by which numerous disease processes may be affected by ablation or mutation of caveolin-1. The hypothesis that caveolin-1 conveys a tumor/transformation suppressor function in the mammary gland is derived from several independent lines of evidence accumulated by genetic, molecular and clinical approaches. The human caveolin-1 gene maps to a suspected tumor suppressor locus (D7S522/ 7q31.1) frequently deleted in human breast carcinomas. In addition, up to 16% of human breast carcinomas harbor a dominant-negative mutation, P132L in the caveolin-1 gene. Caveolin-1 RNA and protein levels are also downregulated in huma...

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