MNT: Critical Genes Mutated In Stomach Cancer Identified
Date: 28.5.2012
An international team of scientists, led by researchers from the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School (Duke-NUS) in Singapore and National Cancer Centre of Singapore, has identified hundreds of novel genes that are mutated in stomach cancer, the second-most lethal cancer worldwide.
The study, which appears online in Nature Genetics, paves the way for treatments tailored to the genetic make-up of individual stomach tumors.
Stomach cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death globally with more than 700,000 deaths each year, and is particularly common in East Asia. Treatment of this deadly disease is often difficult and unsuccessful because of late detection of tumors and a poor understanding of the causes. In the United States, less than a quarter of patients survive more than five years after diagnosis, even after treatment.
"Until now, the genetic abnormalities that cause stomach cancers are still largely unknown, which partially explain the overall poor treatment outcome," said Patrick Tan, M.D., Ph.D., senior author of the study and associate professor in the Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Program at Duke-NUS. Tan also leads the Genomic Oncology Program at the Cancer Sciences Institute of Singapore and is a group leader at the Genome Institute of Singapore...
... the whole study you can find on
