**Meet the editor**

Dr. Yue Cheng is currently working in the University of Hong Kong as an active researcher in cancer biology, molecular genetics, and stem cell biology. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology in cancer biology. He began his research career on TSGs in Dr. Eric Stanbridge's laboratory at the University of California at Irvine. For a long

time, he has been interested in the study of nasopharyngeal carcinoma and made landmark achievements by studying tumor suppressive activities in this cancer. His seminal works provided functional evidence of a tumor suppressive region mapped on the chromosome 3p21.3, which was subsequently confirmed as a TSG cluster region in human genome. During his career at National Cancer Institute of USA, he started to be interested in the stem cell biology and mechanisms of relevant signaling regulation in these cells. His recent works focus on how Wnt pathway is a critical signaling in the control of TSG networks, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, and tumor development in human cells.

Contents

**Preface VII**

Chapter 1 **Strain-Specific Allele Loss: An Important Clue to Tumor Suppressors Involved in Tumor Susceptibility 1**

Chapter 3 **MicroRNAs and lncRNAs as Tumour Suppressors 45** Emanuela Boštjančič and Damjan Glavač

**Stemness Transition in Somatic Cells 75**

Fani Papagiannouli and Bernard M. Mechler

Chapter 6 **Polyphenolic Compounds Targeting p53-Family Tumor**

**Future Perspectives 97**

and Valérie B. Schini-Kerth

**Anti-Tumor Activities 169**

Hitoshi Yagisawa

Chapter 2 **To Grow, Stop or Die? – Novel Tumor-Suppressive Mechanism Regulated by the Transcription Factor E2F 17** Eiko Ozono, Shoji Yamaoka and Kiyoshi Ohtani

Chapter 4 **Roles of Tumor Suppressor Signaling on Reprogramming and**

Josephine Mun Yee Ko, Yue Cheng and Maria Li Lung

Chapter 5 **Modeling Tumorigenesis in Drosophila: Current Advances and**

**Suppressors: Current Progress and Challenges 129**

Chapter 7 **START-GAP/DLC Family Proteins: Molecular Mechanisms for**

Nelly Etienne-Selloum, Israa Dandache, Tanveer Sharif, Cyril Auger

Arthur Kwok Leung Cheung, Yee Peng Phoon, Hong Lok Lung,

Nobuko Mori and Yoshiki Okada

## Contents

## **Preface XI**



## Chapter 8 **MIG-6 and SPRY2 in the Regulation of Receptor Tyrosine Kinase Signaling: Balancing Act via Negative Feedback Loops 199**

Preface

human cells.

apeutic application.

Losses of specific chromosomal regions are frequently reported in different human tumors, suggesting that these regions may contain important genes associated with tumor develop‐ ment. Cell fusion studies provided the first functional evidence for a class of negatively-act‐ ing tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) harbored on certain human chromosomes. Based on Knudson's "two-hit hypothesis", the first TSG, RB was identified. Since 1980s, many TSGs have been discovered by using different approaches. Accumulated knowledge indicates that TSGs not limited to tumor suppression play critical roles in various biological activities in

In 20132, InTech published a book called "Tumor Suppressor Genes", which covers the most important fields, from cell cycle control, signaling pathways, epigenetic regulation, and cur‐ rent challenges to therapeutic applications of known TSGs. Some well-studied TSGs, such as p53 and p16, and their regulatory mechanisms in tumor development are addressed in this book. However, TSG research is a fast growing area, and many novel approaches and find‐ ings have been discovered recently. Therefore, it is necessary to publish a new open access

This book, "Future Aspects of Tumor Suppressor Genes", contains some important areas that were not mentioned in the previous book. The majority of known TSGs were identified from hereditary tumor syndromes. However, more than 90% of human tumors are sporadic cases, so it is always a challenge to identify tumor susceptibility loci in sporadic tumors. Using ani‐ mal models, authors in this book investigated whether strain-specific allele loss was an im‐ portant clue to identify tumor suppressors involved in tumor susceptibility, which should be interesting to many researchers. Other basic researches contain investigations of several TSG signaling pathways from different laboratories: START-GAP/DLC family proteins and their molecular pathways involved in the control of cell growth, E2F-mediated tumor suppressive mechanism associated with RB, p53, ARF, p27Kip1 and TAp73 transcription factors, and TSGs in the regulation of receptor tyrosine kinase signaling via a negative feedback loop. Understanding these signaling regulatory mechanisms may lead to findings of molecular tar‐ gets for cancer therapy. In recent years, it has been well-accepted that microRNAs are an abundant class of endogenous small RNA molecules that can regulate tumor development. To reflect the trends of these novel researches, authors in this book present an extensive re‐ view for current knowledge of microRNAs that play in the control of tumor growth and ther‐

This book also includes some other fascinating fields and emerging subjects in TSG studies. For example, the application of Drosophila as a special model for tumor suppression studies is addressed, and future directions used for the pharmacological screening and therapy

book that may provide future directions for TSG studies.

Yu-Wen Zhang and George F. Vande Woude
