Tag Archives: gene

Unsuspected gene found frequently mutated in colorectal, endometrial cancers

Reporting in the October 26, 2014 edition of Nature Genetics, investigators from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard said the mutated gene helps control an important cell-signaling pathway, Wnt, that has been implicated in many forms of cancer. They suggest that the RNF43 mutation may serve as a biomarker that identifies patients with colorectal and endometrial cancer who could benefit from precision cancer drugs that target the Wnt pathway, although no such drugs are currently available. “Tumors that have this mutation may be telling us that they are dependent on the Wnt signaling pathway, and they will be uniquely sensitive to drugs that inhibit this pathway,” said Charles Fuchs, MD, MPH, an author of the paper and director of the Center for Gastrointestinal Cancer at Dana-Farber. He is also affiliated with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health…

Blood vessel growth in brain relies on a protein found in tumor blood vessels

A summary of the research appears in the journal Developmental Cell on Oct. 27. The mystery of the gene, TEM5, began in 2000 with research conducted by Brad St. Croix, Ph.D., working in the laboratory of Bert Vogelstein, M.D., a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and the Clayton Professor of Oncology, and Kenneth Kinzler, Ph.D., professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine…

Anaplastic lymphoma kinase immunohistochemistry testing comparable to, if not better than, fluorescence in situ hybridization testing

ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) shrink tumors and increase progression-free survival in late-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients positive for ALK as determined by the fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) test, a test for DNA rearrangement within the gene. …

Fast modeling of cancer mutations

MIT researchers have now developed a new way to model the effects of these genetic mutations in mice. Their approach, based on the genome-editing technique known as CRISPR, is much faster than existing strategies, which require genetically engineering mice that carry the cancerous mutations. “It’s a very rapid and very adaptable approach to make models,” says Thales Papagiannakopoulos, a postdoc at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and one of the lead authors of the paper, which appears in the Oct…

Silencing the speech gene FOXP2 causes breast cancer cells to metastasize — ScienceDaily

Now a research team led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has identified an unexpected link between a transcription factor known to regulate speech and language development and metastatic colonization of breast cancer. Currently described online in Cell Stem Cell, the new findings demonstrate that, when silenced, the FOXP2 transcription factor, otherwise known as the speech gene, endows breast cancer cells with a number of malignant traits and properties that enable them to survive — and thrive. “We have identified a previously undescribed function for the transcription factor FOXP2 in breast cancer,” explains senior author Antoine Karnoub, PhD, an investigator in the Department of Pathology at BIDMC and Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School…

Earlier unknown molecular-level mechanism may contribute to growth rate of breast cancer

MicroRNAs are small intracellular RNA molecules that regulate gene expression. Therefore, they play important roles in various normal processes of the human body, such as embryogenesis, and the regulation of cell viability. In addition, it is known that abnormal amounts of microRNA stimulate the onset and development of different diseases, such as cancer…