“It’s only ten percent that were classified differently, but it matters a lot if you’re one of those patients,” said senior author Josh Stuart, a professor of biomolecular engineering at UC Santa Cruz. Stuart helped organize the study as part of the Pan-Cancer Initiative of the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project…
Now, MIT researchers have found an alternative: They have shown that a gene-editing system called CRISPR can introduce cancer-causing mutations into the livers of adult mice, enabling scientists to screen these mutations much more quickly. In a study appearing in the Aug. …
This achievement sets the stage to use x-ray crystallography to develop complete images of HIV that include integrase, which in turn will help scientists develop new treatments for the illness. Duane Grandgenett, Ph.D., professor at SLU’s Institute of Molecular Virology and senior author of the study, discovered integrase in 1978, little knowing the piece of virus would provide the basis for an entire class of drugs that now treats HIV…
Next-generation sequencing has revolutionized functional genomics. These techniques are key to understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying cell function in healthy and diseased individuals and the development of diseases like cancer. Data from multiple experiments need to be integrated, but the growing number of data sets makes a thorough comparison and analysis of results challenging. …
One protein with the even more out-there name of ZEB1 (zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1), is now thought to keep breast cancer cells from being successfully treated with radiation therapy, according to a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. …
The markers are variations in the inherited DNA code at particular locations along chromosomes. Several of these variations in the DNA code were identified that influence an individual’s risk for pancreatic cancer. The discovery of these markers — along with four that were previously identified is important for several reasons, said Brian Wolpin, MD, MPH, first author of the report published online by Nature Genetics…
Researchers from the University of São Paulo (USP) have identified an RNA known as INXS that, although containing no instructions for the production of a protein, modulates the action of an important gene in the process of apoptosis, or programmed cell death. …
In healthy cells, TRAP-1 is an important regulator of metabolism and has been shown to regulate energy production in mitochondria, organelles that generate chemically useful energy for the cell. In the mitochondria of cancer cells, TRAP-1 is universally overproduced. The Wistar team’s report, which appears in the journal Cell Reports, shows how “knockout” mice bred to lack the TRAP-1 protein compensate for this loss by switching to alternative cellular mechanisms for making energy…
While breast cancer is one of the most common malignancies among women worldwide, most studies of the genetic risk factors for the disease have focused on women of European ancestry. Given the differences in genetic heritage and environmental exposures between East Asian women and those of European ancestry, the investigators decided to conduct a study in East Asians to search for genetic changes that are linked to breast cancer development. The current study was conducted as part of the Asia Breast Cancer Consortium led by Wei Zheng, M.D., Ph.D., MPH, Ingram Professor of Cancer Research at Vanderbilt. …
Researchers at the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital have now created a mouse model providing the first in vivo evidence that epigenetic alterations alone can cause cancer. Their report appears in the Journal of Clinical Investigation…