 |
|
|
|
|
Gene Studies Reveal Cancer's Secrets
|
| | | | Related Healthscout Videos | |
|
Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next >> For the study, Wu's and team evaluated 70 SNPs in eight microRNA pathway genes. These were taken from 380 ovarian cancer cases, as well as from 146 healthy women.
The researchers found 16 SNPs that were predictive of ovarian cancer risk. Patients who carried five or fewer of these SNPs were at low risk for ovarian cancer. However, patients with six and seven SNPs had more than a twofold increased risk, and those with eight or more had over a fivefold increased risk.
In addition, as the number of these SNPs increases, so does resistance to treatment and poorer survival, Wu said.
Text Continues Below
This information, along with other genetic and lifestyle risk factors, could be used to develop an ovarian cancer risk-prediction model, Wu said.
In a fourth study, researchers led by Dr. Gangning Liang, an associate professor of research in the department of urology at the University of Southern California, reported finding a DNA modification called a "methylation pattern," that may diagnosis bladder cancer and detect patients at risk for recurrence of the disease.
"Bladder cancer is the fifth most common cancer in men and the sixth most common in women," Liang said during the teleconference. "It is mainly found in smokers."
DNA methylation is a process in which genes can be either silenced or activated in cancer. For the study, researchers measured DNA methylation in 12 patients who did not have bladder cancer, 52 patients with non-invasive bladder tumors and 39 patients with invasive bladder tumors.
Comparing cancerous tissue with normal bladder tissue, they found 158 "hypermethylated" loci and 366 "hypomethylated" locations. In addition, they found 21 places that were hypermethylated in the normal-appearing bladder tissue in patients with bladder cancer.
These loci may be markers for identifying people at risk for bladder cancer, the researchers said.
Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next >>
|
Copyright © 2009 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.
Last updated 4/22/2009
|
|
SOURCES: April 21, 2009, teleconference with: John S. Witte, Ph.D., professor, Institute for Human Genetics, University of California, San Francisco; Charles Mullighan, M.D., Ph.D., assistant member, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tenn.; Xifeng Wu, M.D., Ph.D., professor, Department of Epidemiology, University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston; Susan Slager, Ph.D., associate professor of biostatistics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.; Sunita Setlur, Ph.D., instructor in pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston; Gangning Liang, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of research, Department of Urology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; presentations, American Association for Cancer Research 100th Annual Meeting, Denver
|
.gif)
