Tag Archives: rna

Crucial step in DNA repair identified by researchers

Such disorders are caused by faulty DNA repair systems that increase the risk for cancer and other conditions. The findings are published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Regents Professor Michael Smerdon and post-doctoral researcher Peng Mao found that when DNA is damaged, a specific protein must first be “unbuckled” to allow easy access for the DNA “repair crew.” Without this unbuckling, entry to the damaged site is hampered by the compact arrangement of genes and protein in chromosomes called chromatin. …

RNA combination therapy for lung cancer offers promise for personalized medicine

This week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT now report that they have successfully delivered small RNA therapies in a clinically relevant mouse model of lung cancer to slow and shrink tumor growth. Their research offers promise for personalized RNA combination therapies to improve therapeutic response. …

Editing HPV’s genes to kill cervical cancer cells

Using the genome editing tool known as CRISPR, the Duke University researchers were able to selectively destroy two viral genes responsible for the growth and survival of cervical carcinoma cells, causing the cancer cells to self-destruct. The findings, appearing online August 7 in the Journal of Virology, give credence to an approach only recently attempted in mammalian cells, and could pave the way toward antiviral strategies targeted against other DNA-based viruses like hepatitis B and herpes simplex. “Because this approach is only going after viral genes, there should be no off-target effects on normal cells,” said Bryan R. …

Powerful new system for classifying tumors revealed — ScienceDaily

“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…

Powerful new system for classifying tumors revealed

“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…

Discovery of pro-metastasis protein reveals mysterious link to neurodegeneration — ScienceDaily

In work published earlier this month in Nature, they identify a protein that appears to act as a “master regulator” by blocking tumor suppressor genes and so helping to set metastasis in motion. “Although the research is in its very early days, if we learn more about how this process works, we may in the future be able to generate drugs that block the triggering of metastatic disease,” says Sohail Tavazoie, senior author on the study, Leon Hess Assistant Professor, and head of the Elizabeth and Vincent Meyer Laboratory of Systems Cancer Biology. To pinpoint this protein, Tavazoie and his colleagues used a computer algorithm previously developed by first author Hani Goodarzi and co-author Saeed Tavazoie, a professor at Columbia University, to scan both the sequence and shape of RNA molecules in breast cancer cells. Only recently have cancer researchers begun to systematically look at the shapes of messenger RNA molecules, which encode instructions from DNA. …

Genetics of cancer: Non-coding DNA can finally be decoded

To better understand how cancer develops, scientists strive to identify genetic factors — whether hereditary or acquired — that could serve as the catalyst or trigger for tumor progression. Until now, the genetic basis of cancers had only been examined in the coding regions of the genome, which constitutes only 2% of it. …