Dr Yousef Amaar is author of ‘Ras-Association Domain Family 1C Protein Enhances Breast Tumor Growth In Vivo’, recently published in Cancer Growth and Metastasis.  We asked Dr Amaar to tell us about the background to the paper.

To start please tell us about the genesis of your paper. Why did you consider it to be important that it should be written? How does it advance existing knowledge in the field?

The findings presented in our paper are a continuation of our previous in vitro work demonstrating that the RASSF1C isoform, unlike its sibling the RASSF1A isoform, is not a tumor suppressor but rather appears to function as a tumor growth promoter in breast cancer. Our studies are an important contribution to the characterization of the function of RASSF1C and to the overall characterization of the dual role of RASSF1 gene in cancer biology. The functional duality of RASSF1 gene in cancer is an interesting new emerging concept that is still in its infancy. Our laboratory is focused on the characterization of the dual role of RASSF1 gene inhuman cancer cells.

When writing a paper what challenges do you face? How did these challenges impact this particular paper? Is there anything you plan to do differently in the future to avoid them?

One of the challenges of our study was to convince our peers that RASSF1C is not a tumor suppressor and that RASSF1C displays opposite function(s) to those of RASSF1A, a well-established tumor suppressor. We plan to use RASSF1A as a control in our studies that involve the characterization of RASSF1C functions so that a direct functional comparison of the two RASSF1 gene isoforms can be clearly demonstrated.

Why did you choose to submit it to this journal? What qualities of the journal did you find particular appealing? How long have you been aware of the journal? Did publishing a paper in the journal alter your view of it?

We chose this journal because we felt it is an appropriate journal that would provide a high level of visibility for our findings. The speed and punctuality of the manuscript reviewing process was also an appealing factor. We have been aware of this journal for about one year now. We are very happy to publish our work in this journal and we will definitely consider it for future work submission.

What is your opinion of other papers recently published within the subject are of your paper? What do you think their strengths and weaknesses (if any) are?

There are not too many papers specifically on the RASSF1C isoform. Often RASSF1C is studied in the shadow of RASSF1A. The lack of studies that directly contrast RASSF1A and RASSF1C functions constitute one of the weaknesses I noticed in recently published literature.

How has the writing of this paper and its underlying research changed or developed your views or understanding of the field? How has this affected your future research plans?

Yes, our future studies are actually designed to contribute to filling the gap of knowledge between the RASSF1A isoform and the rest of the RASSF1 isoforms like the RASSF1C isoform.

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