MACC1, a novel player in solid cancer carcinogenesis

Cancer develops due to uncontrolled proliferation of cells initiated by genetic instability, mutations, and environmental stress. Cells acquire these fundamental abnormalities in a multistep process due to changes in complex multilayer molecular network signaling axes equipping them with increased capacity of proliferation, survival, extracellular matrix (ECM) degradation, migration, invasion, and metastasis. Recently, metastasis-associated in colon cancer 1 (MACC1) was identified with differential display RT-PCR by analyzing the normal mucosa, primary, and metastasis specimens of colon cancer. We discovered that MACC1 is an important transcriptional regulator of hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) receptor c-Met and showed that MACC1 plays an important role in tumorigenesis, migration, invasion, and distant metastasis. In this book chapter, we discuss in-depth the structure and function of MACC1 in different aspects of carcinogenesis like gene regulation, signaling, cell proliferation, apoptosis, migration, invasion, metastasis, angiogenesis, epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT), its role in cell metabolism, and also the impact of MACC1 as predictive and prognostic marker. In addition, we describe MACC1 as druggable target molecule by different approaches to reduce tumorigenesis and metastasis