PHILADELPHIA - The gene for the protein p53 is the most frequently mutated in human cancer. It encodes a tumor suppressor, and traditionally researchers have assumed that it acts primarily as a regulator of how genes are made into proteins. Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine show that the protein has at least one other biochemical activity: controlling the metabolism of the sugar glucose, one of body's main sources of fuel. These new insights on a well-studied protein may be used to develop new cancer therapies.

Xiaolu Yang, PhD, associate professor of Cancer Biology at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, along with Mian Wu, PhD, at the University of Science and Technology of China and Nanjing University, report in the current issue of Nature Cell Biology that p53 controls a molecular crossroads in the cell's glucose metabolic pathway.

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