Derailing the UPS of Protein Turnover in Cancer and other Human Diseases

Abstract

Protein modifications by the covalent linkage of ubiquitin have significant involvement in many cellular processes, including stress response, oncogenesis, viral infection, transcription, protein turnover, organelle biogenesis, DNA repair, cellular differentiation, and cell cycle control. We provide a brief overview of the fundamentals of the regulation of protein turnover by the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway and discuss new therapeutic strategies that aim to mitigate the deleterious effects of its dysregulation in cancer and other human disease pathophysiology.