The emerging role of voltage-gated ion channels in cancer has gained increasing interest in recent years, revealing how they contribute to different aspects and stages of the cancer process, including metastasis.
In this blog post, we share bits of evidence about the involvement of voltage-gated ion channels in human cancers, highlighting their promising use as biomarkers.
Voltage-gated ion channels (VGICs) are one of the three main types of ion channels, along with the extracellular ligand-gated and the intracellular ligand-gated ion channels (and other small groups of various ion channels).
VGICs control rapid bioelectrical signalings such as action potential and contraction. The VGIC superfamily includes calcium channels, chloride channels, potassium channels, zinc-activated ion channels, and sodium channels. The opening of ion channels, due to a change in the membrane potential, allows the diffusion of the correspondent ions Ca2+, Cl−, K+, Zn2+, and Na+.
Other, smaller VGICs categories are the vanilloid transient receptor potential channels (TRPV, mainly located on the plasma membrane), the ATP-gated channels, the cyclic nucleotide-gated channels (CNG, activated by the binding of cGMP or cAMP), and the aquaporins (water channels, that play critical roles in controlling the water contents of cells).