Scientists Find Breast Cancer Gene

Scientists have stated that they have found a knew IKBKE gene that they say is responsible for 30 to 40% of all breast cancer cases

It is being reported that scientists have discovered a gene which is linked to many different types of breast cancer.

They state that the gene is responsible for up to 30% of all breast cancers and that by finding it, hope is there that someday a drug can be manufactured based on the gene to prevent breast cancer from occuring.

"If there's a 10 percent chance that this leads to a treatment for breast cancers that's going to be effective for 30 percent of women, in our way of measuring things that's a big advance." says Dr. Steven Narod, a University of Toronto professor and co-author of the original paper that identified the BRCA1 gene.

The new gene that has been identified is known as an IKBKE gene and in breast cancer patients was found to be present at a 10 time the ratio of normal cells that only contain 2 copies of the gene.

Multiple copies were "found in anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of breast cancers, a pretty large percentage," said Dr William Hahn of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston, who led the research.

"If we can think of ways to target it, (IKBKE) can become potentially very useful in the future," he said.

The gene is responsible for coding for a certain kind of protein known as IKK-epsilon, which acts like a "control switch" to help control cell growth. When to many copies of the gene are found it can lead to the overproduction of kinase, over stimulating a series of growth signals resulting in the cell resisting death and multiplying.

source:www.dogflu.ca