cancers Article Altered Expression and Localization of Tumor Suppressive E3 Ubiquitin Ligase SMURF2 in Human Prostate and Breast Cancer 1, 1, 1 1 Andrea Emanuelli y, Dhanoop Manikoth Ayyathan y, Praveen Koganti , Pooja Anil Shah , Liat Apel-Sarid 2 , Biagio Paolini 3, Rajesh Detroja 4, Milana Frenkel-Morgenstern 4 and Michael Blank 1,* 1 Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Cancer Biology, Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, Bar-Ilan University, 1311502 Safed, Israel;
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[email protected] (P.A.S.) 2 Department of Pathology, The Galilee Medical Center, 22100 Nahariya, Israel;
[email protected] 3 Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Anatomic Pathology Unit 1, Fondazione IRCCS, Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, 20133 Milan, Italy;
[email protected] 4 Laboratory of Cancer Genomics and BioComputing of Complex Diseases, Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, Bar-Ilan University, 1311502 Safed, Israel;
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[email protected] (M.F.-M.) * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +972-54-222-0547; Fax: +972-4-622-9256 These authors contributed equally to this work. y Received: 21 March 2019; Accepted: 16 April 2019; Published: 18 April 2019 Abstract: SMURF2, an E3 ubiquitin ligase and suggested tumor suppressor, operates in normal cells to prevent genomic instability and carcinogenesis. However, the mechanisms underlying SMURF2 inactivation in human malignancies remain elusive, as SMURF2 is rarely found mutated or deleted in cancers. We hypothesized that SMURF2 might have a distinct molecular biodistribution in cancer versus normal cells and tissues.