Tag Archives: eliza

More than half of human cancers carry defects in the gene for p53, and almost all other cancers, with a normal p53 gene, carry other defects that somehow impair the function of the p53 protein. Inherited mutations in the p53 gene put people at a very high risk of developing a range of cancers. The p53 protein’s functions are normally stimulated by potentially cancer-causing events, such as DNA damage from ultraviolet radiation (a cause of skin cancer), or the over-activity of cancer-causing genes. Ms Liz Valente, Dr Ana Janic and Professor Andreas Strasser from the Molecular Genetics of Cancer division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have been dissecting the processes that are controlled by p53, to discover how this protein can suppress cancer development…