Tag Archives: centre

Newly discovered ancestral enzyme facilitates DNA repair

Researchers from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), led by Juan Méndez, head of the DNA Replication Group, together with Luis Blanco, from the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Centre (CBM-CSIC), have discovered how a new human enzyme, the protein PrimPol, is capable of recognising DNA lesions and facilitate their repair during the DNA copying process, thus avoiding irreversible and lethal damage to the cells and, therefore, to the organism. The results are published in the online edition of the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology. …

Three of four cases of bladder cancer display mutations in the same gene

The study was led by Francisco X. Real, head of the Epithelial Carcinogenesis Group at CNIO, together with Nuria Malats, the head of the Genetic & Molecular Epidemiology Group at CNIO, as well as other European groups, especially Yves Allory, a pathologist at the Mondor Hospital (Créteil, Paris, France), who is on a sabbatical year with Real and Malats’s groups at CNIO, and Ellen Zwarthoff’s group at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. The results are published in the online version of the journal European Urology. …

Explaining cancer to better prevent it

Understanding the disease at source Cancer is the abnormal and disordered production in the body of cells, known as "malignant." During evolution, living beings have put in place natural mechanisms to control this unwanted proliferation and prevent too frequent development of these tumours. Scientists at the Centre for ecological and evolutionary research (Creec) in Montpellier, are studying how natural selection has designed this resistance to cancer in various species. A yet unexplained paradox To understand how the body’s defences are used, scientists have examined a paradox, known as "Peto’s paradox," named after the biologist who discovered it in the 1970’s. The larger an animal, the more cells it has and the greater the risk of contracting a cancer. …

New resistance mechanism to chemotherapy in breast and ovarian cancer

The team led by Spanish National Cancer Research Centre researcher Óscar Fernández-Capetillo, head of the Genomic Instability Group, together with researchers from the National Cancer Institute in the US, have participated in a study that describes the causes that explain why tumours with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations stop responding to PARP inhibitor drugs. "PARP inhibitors are only toxic in tumours that have an impaired DNA repair mechanism, such as those that contain BRCA1/2 mutations" says María Nieto-Soler, a researcher from Fernández-Capetillo’s team…