The Janus face of p21

Konstantinos Evangelou; Panagiotis Galanos; Vassilis G Gorgoulis

doi:10.1080/23723556.2016.1215776

The Janus face of p21

Mol Cell Oncol. 2016 Jul 29;3(5):e1215776. doi: 10.1080/23723556.2016.1215776. eCollection 2016.

Authors

Konstantinos Evangelou¹, Panagiotis Galanos¹, Vassilis G Gorgoulis²

Affiliations

¹ Molecular Carcinogenesis Group, Department of Histology and Embryology, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens , Athens, Greece.
² Molecular Carcinogenesis Group, Department of Histology and Embryology, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece; Faculty Institute for Cancer Sciences, Manchester Academic Health Sciences Center, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK; Biomedical Research Foundation, Academy of Athens, Athens, Greece.

Abstract

Accumulating data support the bimodal action of several key cellular factors in cancer. The dogma of p21^WAF1/Cip1 as a tumor suppressor has been recently challenged since new data support its tumor promoting features depending on the tumor environment. Here we discuss the Janus face of p21^WAF1/Cip1.

Keywords: Genomic instability; PCNA; p21WAF1/Cip1; p53; replication stress; tumor heterogeneity.