摘要 |
The invention relates to therapies for treating cancer patients by targeting the osteopontin isoforms OPN-b and OPN-c. Osteopontin is a cytokine that is essential for cellular immunity, particularly through its full length form, OPN-a. OPN-b and OPN-c are splice variants that lack exons 5 and 4, respectively, of the protein's six translated exons. The invention provides methods for treating cancer patients with therapeutics that inhibit or degrade the OPN-b or OPN-c isoforms specifically, thereby leaving the innocuous OPN-a form intact and available to perform its normal functions in the cell.
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