생화학분자생물학회

	Sunghoon Kim( sunghoonkim@yonsei.ac.kr )
	2020-present	Professor, College of Pharmacy & School of Medicine, Yonsei University
	2021-present	CEO, Zymedi
	2020-present	Director, Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Biomedicine (AIBI), Yonsei University
	2010-present	Director, Medicinal Bioconvergence Research Center (Biocon)
	2001-2020	Professor, College of Pharmacy Seoul National University
	1994-2001	Associate Professor, Sung Kyun Kwan University
	1991-1994	Post-Doc, MIT, USA
	1986-1991	Ph.D. Dept of Biology and Medicine, Brown University, USA
	1981-1983	M.S. Dept of Biological Sciences, KAIST
	1977-1981	B.S. Dept of Pharmaceutics, Seoul National University

Functional and pathologic association of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases with cancer

Although key tumorigenic and tumor-suppressive factors have been unveiled over the last several decades, cancer remains the most life-threatening disease. Multiomic analyses of patient samples and an in-depth understanding of tumorigenic processes have rapidly revealed unexpected pathologic associations of new cellular factors previously overlooked in cancer biology. In this regard, the newly discovered activities of human aminoacyl-tRNA synthases (ARSs) deserve attention not only for their pathological significance in tumorigenesis but also regarding diagnostic and therapeutic implications. ARSs are not only essential enzymes covalently linking substrate amino acids to cognate tRNAs for protein synthesis but also function as regulators of cellular processes by sensing different cellular conditions. With their catalytic role in protein synthesis and their regulatory role in homeostasis, functional alterations or dysregulation of ARSs might be pathologically associated with tumorigenesis. This review focuses on the potential implications of ARS genes and proteins in different aspects of cancer based on various bioinformatic analyses and experimental data. We also review their diverse activities involving extracellular secretion, protein–protein interactions, and amino acid sensing, which are related to cancers. The newly discovered cancer-related activities of ARSs are expected to provide new opportunities for detecting, preventing and curing cancers.

Exp. Mol. Med. 2022 May;54(5):553-566. doi: 10.1038/s12276-022-00765-5.