Watching the clock: endoplasmic reticulum-mediated control of circadian rhythms in cancer

Abstract

In the past 20 years both the circadian clock and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress signaling have emerged as major players in oncogenesis and cancer development. Although several lines of evidence have established functional links between these two molecular pathways, their interconnection and the subsequent functional implications in cancer development remain to be fully characterized. Herein, we provide an extensive review of the literature depicting the molecular connectivity linking ER stress signaling and the circadian clock and elaborate on the potential use of these functional interactions in cancer therapeutics.

Key words::

• Angiogenesis
• ATF6
• cancer
• circadian clock
• endoplasmic reticulum
• IRE1
• PER1
• PERK
• stress
• tumor

Acknowledgements

Olivier Pluquet and Nicolas Dejeans contributed equally to this work.

Declaration of interest: This work was funded by grants from INSERM, Institut National du Cancer (INCa) and Ligue Nationale contre le Cancer (Comité des Landes) to E.C. O.P. was supported by a Chair of Excellence from CNRS and University Lille 2. N.D. was funded by a post-doctoral fellowship from the Fondation de France. The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.