Phospholipase Ds (PLDs) are key members of the Phospholipase D family, which play pleiotropic roles in physiological and pathological activities in cells, such as vesicle formation and transport, signaling transduction, cell migration and vascularization. Over the past few years, increasing studies have found the hyperactivated and overexpressed PLD in tumor tissue. PLD inhibitors also exhibit potent anticancer activities, which suggest PLD might be a novel target for cancer therapy.
Professor Yingke Xu’s group has previously found that PLDs are involved in the regulation of glucose transporters translocation and cancer cell migration. Thus they are working on screening of PLDs inhibitors and identifying their regulatory mechanisms. In these two invited review articles published at the journal of <Biological Reviews> and <Progress in Lipid Research>, they systematically reviewed the roles of PLDs in cancer cell growth and proliferation, cell invasion, migration and vascularization in tumors, and also elucidated the functions of each domain of PLDs, the interacting mechanisms between PLDs and their downstream regulators from the structural biology view. Yuanfa Yao, the PhD student at the “Information+X” Graduate Training Programe is the first author of these two papers, and Professor Yingke Xu is the corresponding author. The other authors include BME Master student Yinyan Lin, BME 19’ undergraduate student Xinyi Wang (Now MD student at the medical school of Shanghai Jiaotong University), BME 18’ undergraduate student Xiaohan Qian (Now MD student at the medical school of Zhejiang University), Drs. Jiaqiang Zhou and Hong Li from the Department of Endocrinology at the Affiliated Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital of Zhejiang University, and Professors Jianwu Li and Peng Zhang from the Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology at Chinese Academy of Sciences. These studies were supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation and the Key Research and Development Program of China.
1. Yao Y, Wang X, Li H, Fan J, Qian X, Li H, Xu Y*. 2020. Phospholipase D as a key modulator of cancer progression. Biological Reviews 95:911-935.
(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12592)
2. Yao Y#, Li J#, Lin Y#, Zhou J, Zhang P*, Xu Y*. 2021. Structural insights into phospholipase D function. Progress in Lipid Research 81: 101070.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163782720300503?via%3Dihub)
