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Nerve cell regeneration and the receptor called DCC (Deleted in Colorectal Carcinoma)

Researchers from the university of Montreal published in Cell an article that gives some new insight in the issue of nerve cell regeneration. "We found an alternate way that helps nerve cells respond quickly and locally," sayd one of the authors of the paper, Philippe P. Roux, a professor of pathology and cell biology and a researcher at the University of Montreal Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC). He sees new therapeutic targets in future based on this principle: "We can envisage manipulating this alternate mechanism to make cells respond locally to their environment. Our findings mean that scientists must consider a new way that cells organize themselves to perform essential functions."

DCC is a well characterized receptor in axon growth growth and can also be found postsynaptically in dendrites. DCC is one of the receptors for the extracellular factor netrin and netrin is known to stimulate protein synthesis in axons.

The authors stated:

The results here show a physical complex of DCC with components involved in translation initiation, including eIFs, ribosomal subunits, and monosomes. Furthermore, DCC functionally mediated translational regulation in response to its ligand netrin-1.

The results of the study however, are very young and even for a target for new drugs it would be to early.

Source: Tcherkezian et al. Transmembrane Receptor DCC Associates with Protein Synthesis Machinery and Regulates Translation. Cell, 2010; 141 (4): 632 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.04.008