The PRL-1, PRL-2, and PRL-3 phosphatases are prenylated protein tyrosine phosphatases with oncogenic activity that are proposed to drive tumor metastasis.
These data suggest that a down-regulation of the PRL-3 gene is important in lung cancer metastasis and provide a new hypothesis of lung cancer metastases.
Thus, the discovery that the expression of a protein tyrosine phosphatase, protein of regenerating liver-3 (PRL-3), is upregulated in colon cancer metastases provided an exciting indication that the altered regulation of specific protein tyrosine phosphorylation events and signaling pathways might characterize these metastatic cells and/or be key in promoting the tumor-to-metastasis transition in this, and perhaps other, cancers of epithelial origin.
These studies establish an unexpected and unprecedented specificity in metastatic gene expression profiles: PRL-3 is apparently expressed in CRC metastases to any organ but is not expressed in metastases of other cancers to the same organs or in nonmetastatic CRCs.