Cancer, Cancer Treatment

Researchers at McGill University, the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI MUHC) and the McGill University and Gnome Qubec Innovation Centre, along with colleagues at other Canadian and Belgian institutions, have discovered DNA variations in a gene that increases susceptibility to developing Crohn’s disease.

Their study was published in the January issue of the journal Nature Genetics .

The study was led by McGill PhD candidate Alexandra-Chlo Villani under the supervision of Dr. Denis Franchimont and Dr. Thomas Hudson. Dr. Franchimont, now with the Erasme Hospital in Brussels, Belgium, was a Canada Research Chair formerly affiliated with the Gastroenterology Dept. of the MUHC. Dr. Hudson, former Director of the McGill University and Gnome Qubec Innovation Centre, is now the President and Scientific Director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), located in Toronto.

Treatment with cetuximab (Erbitux) was less effective for patients with advanced colorectal cancer with a certain gene mutation, a new study found. Scientists already knew that the presence of K-ras mutations explains about 30 to 40 percent of cases in which colorectal cancer patients fail to respond to Erbitux, developed by ImClone and sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck KGaA, and Vectibix, from Amgen. The latest findings added another 12 percent.

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While examining patterns of DNA modification in lung cancer, a team of international researchers has discovered what they say is a surprising new mechanism.

They say that “silencing” of a single gene in lung cancer led to a general impairment in genome-wide changes in cells, contributing to cancer development and progression.

In the January 1, 2009, issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, they also report finding a strong link between modification of the key gene, MTHFR, and tobacco use by lung cancer patients - even if the patient had smoked for a short period of time.

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 22 — A new study suggests that people with advanced colon cancer who have a particular gene mutation won’t benefit from the medication cetuximab (Erbitux).

While the drug can add months to the lives of people without a mutation in a gene called K-ras, those who have the mutation won’t see any benefit from this additional therapy, reports the study, which is published in the Oct. 23 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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A single tumor-suppressor gene may provide a unique marker for senescence in Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in vitro, while also playing a role in moving MSCs into senescence, researchers at the Human Health Foundation and the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine report.

Their work was published in Stem Cells and Development .

The finding is important, since MSCs are currently being tested in cell and gene therapy for a number of human diseases.

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 15 — Researchers have identified a new genetic signature that may predict whether a liver tumor is likely to recur, according to a new study.

Unlike other such signatures that have been identified for other cancers, this one has something of a flourish: It is hidden not within the tumor itself, but in the normal cells that surround it — and which, by inference, remain in the body following surgery.

The findings potentially open the door to new surveillance, treatment, and intervention strategies for liver cancer patients, both after surgery and possibly before the primary cancer ever arises, experts said.

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By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A broad analysis of genes has turned up 26 mutations linked with the most common form of lung cancer, several of which play a role in other cancers as well, researchers said on Wednesday.

The findings, published in the journal Nature, double the number of genes already linked with lung adenocarcinoma, a type of non-small cell lung cancer that accounts for 40 percent of the more than 1 million lung cancer deaths each year.

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