Tag Archives: gene

CNN anchor says she has breast cancer, is getting mastectomy

CNN anchor Zoraida Sambolin says she has breast cancer and is getting a double mastectomy. Sambolin, who anchors CNN's “Early Start” morning show, talked about her condition on the show Tuesday while discussing the recent double mastectomy of actress Angelina Jolie. Sambolin said wanting to be there for her children helped her make the decision. In a New York Times op-ed, Jolie announced she has had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that made it extremely likely she would get breast cancer. Jolie writes that she made the choice with thoughts of her six children after watching her own mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, die too young from cancer.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/14/cnn-anchor-is-getting-mastectomy/

Link between tumor suppressors and starvation survival suggested

CU-Boulder Professor Min Han said the research team was interested in how a common tumor suppressor gene known as Retinoblastoma 1, or Rb, behaved under conditions of starvation. The question is important, said Han, because it may help researchers understand why many cancer cells are more susceptible to starvation or fasting than ordinary cells. Han and his team studied a popular lab organism called C. elegans, a translucent nematode smaller than an eyelash…

Your immune system: On surveillance in the war against cancer

"We know that one function of our immune system is to detect and destroy pre-malignant cells before they can become cancer," said lead author Lance D. Miller, Ph.D., associate professor of cancer biology at Wake Forest Baptist. "However, sometimes the immune system becomes unresponsive to the presence of these cells and a tumor develops." This unresponsiveness can be temporary, and the immune system can remain alerted to the fact that there’s a problem. Immune cells can stand post along the borders of the tumor and even infiltrate the tumor core, where they may gain a better position for eventual attack. …

Gene offers clues to new treatments for a harmful blood clotting disorder

The research, which was led by Yanming Wang, a Penn State University associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and Denisa Wagner, senior author with decades of research on thrombosis at the Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard University Medical School, will be published in in the Online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week ending 10 May 2013. The team’s new findings are an extension of previous research by Wang and other scientists. In earlier studies, Wang and his colleagues had revealed that a gene in mice called Pad4 (peptidylarginine deiminase 4) produces an enzyme that plays an important role in protecting the body from infection. The researchers discovered that cells with a functioning PAD4 enzyme are able to build around themselves a protective, bacteria-killing web that is dubbed a NET (neutrophil extracellular trap)…

Making cancer less cancerous

"This master regulator is normally turned off in adult cells, but it is very active during embryonic development and in all highly aggressive tumors studied to date," says Linda Resar, M.D., an associate professor of medicine, oncology and pediatrics, and affiliate in the Institute for Cell Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Our work shows for the first time that switching this gene off in aggressive cancer cells dramatically changes their appearance and behavior." A description of the experiments appears in the May 2 issue of the journal PLOS ONE…

Discovery helps show how breast cancer spreads

It has long been known that women with denser breasts are at higher risk for breast cancer. This greater density is caused by an excess of a structural protein called collagen. "We have shown how increased collagen in the breasts could increase the chances of breast tumors spreading and becoming more invasive," says Gregory D. …