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Updated: Feb 7, 2026

Identification of Fatty Acids in Bacillus cereus
Published on: December 5, 2016
Diverse roles of fatty acid binding proteins (FABPs) in development and pathogenesis of cancers
Mina Amiri1, Saghar Yousefnia2, Farzad Seyed Forootan3
1Department of Modern Biology, ACECR Institute of Higher Education (Isfahan Branch), Isfahan, Iran.
Abstract:
One of the most importantly involved pathways in cancer development is fatty-acid signaling pathway. Synthesized lipids as energetic sources are consumed by cancer cells for proliferation, growth, survival, invasion and angiogenesis. Fatty acids as signaling compounds regulate metabolic and transcriptional networks, survival pathways and inflammatory responses. Aggregation of fatty acids with fatty acid binding proteins (FABPs) facilitates their transportation to different cell organelles. FABPs, a group of lipid binding proteins modulate fatty acid metabolism, cell growth and proliferation and cancer development. They may be used as tumor marker in some cancers. FABPs are expressed in most malignancies such as prostate, breast, liver, bladder and lung cancer which are associated with the incidence, proliferation, metastasis, invasion of tumors. This review introduces several isoforms of FABPs (FABP1-12) and summarizes their function and their possible roles in cancer development through some proposed mechanisms.
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