Activity profiling of deubiquitinating enzymes in cervical carcinoma biopsies and cell lines.

Ubiquitin specific proteases (USPs) regulate the production and recycling of ubiquitin and are thereby critically involved in the control of cell growth, differentiation, and apoptosis. Increasing evidence implicates deregulation of USPs in malignant transformation but there is very little information on the overall and specific activity of USPs in normal and tumor tissues. We have used a chemistry-based functional proteomics approach to profile the activities of individual USPs in biopsies of human papillomavirus (HPV) carrying cervical carcinoma and adjacent normal tissue.

Methylation and silencing of the retinoic acid receptor-beta 2 gene in cervical cancer.

Background: Expression of the retinoic acid receptor beta2 (RAR-beta2), a putative tumor suppressor gene, is reduced in various human cancers, including squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) of the uterine cervix. The mechanism of the inhibition of RAR-beta2 expression remains obscure. We examined whether methylation of RAR-beta2 gene could be responsible for this silencing in cervical SCC.