REVIEW ARTICLE Revisiting the roles of VHR/DUSP3 phosphatase in human diseases Lilian Cristina Russo, Je´ssica Oliveira Farias, Pault Yeison Minaya Ferruzo, Lucas Falca˜o Monteiro, Fa´bio Luı´sForti* Departamento de Bioquı´mica, Instituto de Quimica, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, SP, BR. Russo LC, Farias JO, Ferruzo PY,Monteiro LF,Forti FL. Revisiting the roles of VHR/DUSP3 phosphatase in human diseases. Clinics. 2018;73(suppl 1):e466s *Corresponding author. E-mail: fl
[email protected] Protein tyrosine phosphatases have long been considered key regulators of biological processes and are there- fore implicated in the origins of various human diseases. Heterozygosity, mutations, deletions, and the complete loss of some of these enzymes have been reported to cause neurodegenerative diseases, autoimmune syndromes, genetic disorders, metabolic diseases, cancers, and many other physiological imbalances. Vaccinia H1-related phos- phatase, also known as dual-specificity phosphatase 3, is a protein tyrosine phosphatase enzyme that regulates the phosphorylation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathway, a central mediator of a diver- sity of biological responses. It has been suggested that vaccinia H1-related phosphatase can act as a tumor sup- pressor or tumor-promoting phosphatase in different cancers. Furthermore, emerging evidence suggests that this enzyme has many other biological functions, such as roles in immune responses, thrombosis, hemostasis, angio- genesis, and genomic stability, and this broad spectrum of vaccinia H1-related phosphatase activity is likely the result of its diversity of substrates. Hence, fully identifying and characterizing these substrate-phosphatase interactions will facilitate the identification of pharmacological inhibitors of vaccinia H1-related phosphatase that can be evaluated in clinical trials.