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Other news... long in future "new tests"...
05:34 PM ET 03/27/97
U.S. researchers finds new cancer-fighting gene
By Grant McCool
NEW YORK (Reuter) - A new gene has been identified that may
help in the early detection and treatment of brain, breast and
prostate cancer, researchers said Thursday.
The discovery, by a young New York researcher and a team of
scientists from several laboratories, showed great promise but
was not expected to help patients directly for some years,
scientists said.
The researchers found that when the gene, called P-TEN, is
active in human cells, it suppresses cancerous tumors. But when
a cell is lacking P-TEN, it frequently leads to tumor
advancement.
``Understanding this pathway, which we don't understand yet,
is going to be a very important target for the research group in
my laboratory,'' research leader Dr. Ramon Parsons told a news
conference announcing the finding.
``It's going to take a long time and involve many more
laboratories than mine,'' said Parsons, senior author of the
research which was also published in the March 28 issue of the
journal Science.
Parsons, 35, an assistant professor of pathology and
medicine in the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center and
the departments of pathology and medicine at
Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, made the discovery with
Dr. Michael Wigler of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.
``Although initially mutated in breast cancer, we found
mutations of P-TEN in brain and prostate cancer and expect to
find mutations in other cancers as well,'' Parsons said.
P-TEN is a suppressor gene, or a gene that restrains the
body from the tendency to create tumors. Changes or mutations in
that gene interfere with its suppressing effect and several
different cancers appear to have a relationship to it.
``The change in that gene in some people puts them at
greater risk for cancers, and this discovery says that we'll
probably be able to develop a test to find out who might have
genetic changes like that,'' said Dr. Herbert Pardes, dean of
the faculty of medicine at Columbia University College of
Physicians and Surgeons.
``It may help us give better information about the prognosis
for cancer patients and it's another step in the direction over
the next five or so years of finding treatments to block these
cancers,'' Pardes said.
Parsons said that unlike other mutations of genes found in
hereditary predispostions to cancer, most P-TEN mutations are
found in the more common sporadic cancers. More than 80 percent
of all cancers are sporadic.
P-TEN received its name from its similarity to phosphatases
and to tensin, part of a complex of proteins that sits below the
cell surface and which may be involved in the spread of tumors.
It is located in the chromosome 10. The role of this chromosome
in the development of various sporadic cancers has been
investigated for nearly a decade.
Scientists said it was too early to know whether the gene
may help families detect generational cancer.
``We have to establish that this gene is associated with
familial cancers and that hasn't been shown yet, but it may. And
if it is, we have to develop a diagnostic test that is
incredibly reliable ... 99 percent is not reliable enough,''
said Dr. Karen Antman, an internationally recognized expert in
breast cancer who is director of the Herbert Irving and Columbia
Presbyterian centers researching cancers.
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