LPTS: A Novel Tumor Suppressor Gene and a Promising Drug Target for Cancer Intervention

Liver-related putative tumor suppressorlpts is a liver-related tumor suppressor candidate gene initially isolated by positional candidate cloning method. Three translation products of lpts gene are found, that are LPTS-L, LPTS-S and LPTS-M respectively. The gene highly expresses in normal tissues but lowly in cancer tissues. The LPTS proteins can suppress the activity of telomerase and trigger apoptosis for tumor cells in vivo and in vitro, despite that the detailed anti-cancer mechanism remains undefined. This review successively describes the lpts genomic assembly, transcriptional regulation and structure-activity evaluation of different LPTS isoforms; then it represents the LPTS binding partners, for example Pin2/TRF1 and MCRS2, which play important roles in decreasing telomerase activity, which benefits to reveal the anticancer mechanism; subsequently, it surveys several patents of recombinant LPTS proteins such as TAT-LPTS-LC, PinX1/C-G4S-9R-G4S-mBAFF and PinX1/C-9R-mBAF that can inhibit the growth of tumor cells. Lpts gene is becoming a promising drug target for cancer intervention owing to its powerful inhibition efficacy on telomerase activity, and recombinant LPTS proteins claimed by a couple of patents seem to be potential anti-cancer agents.