Serpinb3c

Serpins are the largest and mostdiverse family of serine protease inhibitors which are involved in a number offundamental biological processes such as blood coagulation, complementactivation, fibrinolysis, angiogenesis, inflammation and tumor suppression andare expressed in a cell-specific manner. Serpins are a group of proteins withsimilar structures that were first identified as a set of proteins able toinhibit proteases. The acronym serpin was originally coined because manyserpins inhibit chymotrypsin-like serine proteases (serine proteaseinhibitors). Over 1000 serpins have been identified.Mouse SerpinB3, also known asSquamous cell carcinoma antigen 1, SCCA-1, SERPINB3, SCCA and SCCA1, is acytoplasm protein which belongs to the serpin family and Ov-serpinsubfamily. SerpinB3 may act as a protease inhibitor to modulate the host immuneresponse against tumor cells. Mouse SerpinB3a and SerpinB3b, but not Serpinb3c,are functional, inhibiting both serine and cysteine proteinases with differentinhibitory profiles due to the difference of two amino acids in their reactivesite loops. SerpinB3a is ubiquitously expressed in most tissues, whereasexpression of SerpinB3b is limited to keratinocytes. SerpinB3a and SerpinB3bmay play different roles by inhibiting intrinsic or extrinsic proteinases withdifferent expression distributions and different inhibitory profiles.