Exosomal protein interactors as emerging therapeutic targets in urothelial bladder cancer

Background: exosomes are rich sources of biological material (proteins and nucleic acids) secreted by both tumor and normal cells,and found in urine of urinary bladder cancer patients. objective: the objective of the study was to identify interacting exosomal proteins in bladder cancer for future use in targeted therapy. methods: the exocarta database (. www.exocarta.org) was mined for urinary bladder cancer specific exosomal proteins. the urinary bladder cancer specific exosomal proteins (. n=. 248) were analyzed to identify enriched pathways by onto-tool pathway express (. http://vortex.cs.wayne.edu/ontoexpress). results: enriched pathways included cellular architecture,motility,cell to cell adhesion,tumorigenesis and metastasis. proteins in the 9 top-ranked pathways included ctnna1 (alpha-catenin),ctnnb1 (beta-catenin),vsap,itga4,pak1,ddr1,cdc42,rhoa,nras,rho,pik3ar1,mlc1,mmrn1,and cttnbp2 and network analysis revealed 10 important hub proteins and identified inferred interactor nf2. conclusions: the importance of identifying interactors is that that they can be used as targets for therapy,for example,using bevacizumab (avastin - an angiogenesis inhibitor) against nf2 to inhibit protein-protein interactions will inhibit tumor growth and progression by hindering the exosome biogenesis. © 2015.