Research in Brief
Penn State Intercom......September 12, 2002

Study finds target
for anti-cancer drugs

College of Medicine researchers have identified a new target for anti-cancer therapeutics -- km23/mLC7-1, a protein that helps to direct protein traffic in the cell.

The team of scientists led by principal investigator Kathleen M. Mulder, professor of pharmacology, has found that at least 45 percent of cancer patient tumor tissues have alterations in km23.

In part, km23 is responsible for the movement of cellular proteins along microtubules, the "highways" of the cell. The cellular proteins, or "cargo," are actually driven along the microtubules by "motors" in the cell.

This study, titled "A novel TGFbeta receptor-interacting protein that is also a light chain of the motor protein dynein," was published in the online version of Molecular Biology of the Cell, found at http://www.molbiolcell.org/ on the Web.

Since some of the anti-cancer drugs currently on the market are known to affect the microtubule "highways" of the cell, this research also may lead to a better understanding of precisely how and why some of the anti-cancer drugs currently in use are working.

Study reveals differences
in earnings management

A study co-authored by two researchers in The Smeal College of Business suggests that public banks are more likely than private banks to manage earnings to achieve simple benchmarks, such as increases in earnings.

The study, co-authored by Bin Ke, assistant professor of accounting, Anne Beatty, associate professor of accounting; and Kathy Petroini, Deloitte and Touche professor of accounting at Michigan State University, compares small changes in earnings and strings of consecutive earnings increases for public versus private banks during 1988 to 1999.

"We found that public banks report fewer small declines in earnings and more small increases in earnings than expected. In contrast, we found that private banks report only marginally fewer small declines in earnings than expected," explained Ke.

The study's results should be interest to the Securities and Exchange Commission in its ongoing initiative against earnings management, and investors and auditors of private firms should find it interesting that private firms are not strongly inclined to report consistently increasing earnings.

Back