Secular Café: Gene clue to some pancreatic cancer

Secular Café Serious discussion of science, skepticism, evolution, pseudoscience, and the paranormal

Gene clue to some pancreatic cancer Apr 30th 2012, 07:33 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17870315 Quote: Aggressive pancreatic tumours may be treatable with a new class of drugs, according to Cancer Research UK Less than one in five people with this form of cancer are still alive a year after being diagnosed. A study, published in the journal Nature, showed that a gene was being switched off in the cancerous cells. The reseachers said drugs were already being tested which had the potential to turn the gene back on, to stop the spread of the cancer... ...Prof David Tuveson, from the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute, said: "We suspected that the fault wasn't in the genetic code at all, but in the chemical tags on the surface of the DNA that switch genes on and off, and by running more lab tests we were able to confirm this. "Drugs which strip away these tags are already showing promise in lung cancer and this study suggests they could also be effective." Cancer treatments have improved over many years, but it's agonisingly slow progress.

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions