Our group studies mechanisms that are related to the development of cancer and resistance to cancer therapies.

Our focus of is to understand the role and regulation of Protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) in human cancers and especially function of PP2A inhibitor proteins as human oncoproteins. Our recent results suggest that a potential biological outcome of aberrant PP2A signaling in cancer is conferring drug resistance. We hypothesize that re-activation of PP2A, via targeting of its endogenous inhibitory proteins, could be used as a general strategy for multi-target inhibition of chemoresistance in common human cancer types. In addition, these results may have importance in patient stratification for monotherapies using the identified small molecule compounds. The research group is led by Professor Jukka Westermarck.

Read more: https://bioscience.fi/research/cancer-cell-signaling/