The same gene promotes prostate cancer and prevents breast cancer

Members of the public increasingly is becoming more familiar with the idea that "cancer" is not a disease but a term used to describe several diseases whose causes are many.

Now researchers have a single gene, which is a form of cancer, when turned on, the other favors when he discovered off the coast. Their discovery not only provides a clear example of how unique the genetic basis of different types of cancer can be, but how different types of cancer are "likely to require different treatments, individual approaches.

The discovery was made by a team of researchers at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, Charis Eng, MD, PhD LED. The study on "both sides" of a single gene effects on the prostate and breast cancer, what Eng and colleagues, the two most common types of cancer to identify the western world.

The gene is called into question the androgen receptor (AR), and while it is both breast and prostate cancer, which has opposite effects on the front of each disease, prostate cancer, the gene expression AR stimulate the growth of cancer after, while in breast cancer, the CA is the lack of support for these ideas to spread.

According to researchers, this discovery helps explain why developing breast cancer after menopause (when production falls AR in women) tend, and because one of the most common treatments of prostate cancer includes AR blocked.

The discovery team is important in the emerging field of personalized medicine.

"Until now," said Eng IO9, "is very rare that it is (say) two-sided effect."

"Dare I say rare, to be the first in the field of science or medicine," he said, "[but] it can be one of the first."

While part of human knowledge, as such, to see the RA and I wonder how an enemy as diverse as "cancer" could never be defeated, researchers such as England, who is also president of the Institute of Genomic Medicine - how to interpret the results with optimism. Finally, the fact that tumors are more that can be addressed specifically and efficiently.

IO9 Eng said his team discovered several implications for the future of health care based on genetics. Their conclusions, in particular, show that treatment must be tailored, for example, sex of the patient and the affected tissue, says Eng, one could never go back to AR, a patient diagnosed with prostate cancer. It continues:

    You can imagine [that knowledge] is a breast cancer has a low AR (indicating an aggressive cancer with poor prognosis) can make a future return to the HR and change of physician to perform the clinical outcome.

The research results were published in the latest issue of Oncogene