Bowel cancer gene hotspots find will tailor treatment
Posted 02-10-2010 at 05:36 PM by admin
BBC News
00:00 GMT, Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Scientists have found genetic hotspots for bowel cancer they say will help doctors better treat the disease.
They say a third of the 37,500 people diagnosed with the cancer in the UK each year harbours the DNA code that renders common drugs ineffective.
Being able to identify these patients early will mean they can be started sooner on treatments that will work.
The next step, say the authors in the British Journal of Cancer, is to devise screening tests for the gene faults.
The hotspots all sit in a gene called K-ras which carries the DNA code needed to switch off and on cell growth.
Experts already knew that some bowel cancers were caused by faults in this gene that left the growth switch permanently "on".
And these patients tend not to respond to cancer drugs like cetuximab and panitumumab.
The University of Dundee researchers analysed 106 bowel cancer tumour samples to search for K-ras errors.
Read the rest of the article here.
BBC © MMX
00:00 GMT, Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Scientists have found genetic hotspots for bowel cancer they say will help doctors better treat the disease.
They say a third of the 37,500 people diagnosed with the cancer in the UK each year harbours the DNA code that renders common drugs ineffective.
Being able to identify these patients early will mean they can be started sooner on treatments that will work.
The next step, say the authors in the British Journal of Cancer, is to devise screening tests for the gene faults.
The hotspots all sit in a gene called K-ras which carries the DNA code needed to switch off and on cell growth.
Experts already knew that some bowel cancers were caused by faults in this gene that left the growth switch permanently "on".
And these patients tend not to respond to cancer drugs like cetuximab and panitumumab.
The University of Dundee researchers analysed 106 bowel cancer tumour samples to search for K-ras errors.
Read the rest of the article here.
BBC © MMX
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