Damage-regulated autophagy modulator (DRAM) is a p53 target gene encoding a lysosomal protein that induces autophagy, a process that degrades cytosolic proteins and organelles. It has been suggested that activation of DRAM by p53 is simultaneous to the activation by p53 of one or more proapoptotic genes such as PUMA, Bax, etc., and that the signaling pathways regulated by these genes together promote a full cell death response. By itself, DRAM cannot induce apoptosis, but the fact that it is inactivated in certain cancers highlights the importance of DRAM and suggests that autophagy may play a more important role in cancer than initially suspected. At least two different isoforms of DRAM are known to exist.
