(Press-News.org) Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute have uncovered a link between the genomes of cells originating in the neural crest and development of tumors -- a discovery that could lead to new ways to diagnose and treat cancer.
The new finding, recently published in Oncotarget, resolves why some cancer types share genomic and clinical features.
The discovery may also lead to new ways to diagnose and treat brain cancer, such as gliomas, medulloblastomas, and neuroblastomas; and skin cancer, known as melanoma.
More than 22,000 new cases of brain cancer and more than 73,000 new cases of skin cancer and were expected to arise in Americans in 2015, according to the National Cancer Institute.
To reveal when cancer-causing genomic changes occur , a research group led by Harold "Skip" Garner, a professor in the departments of biological science, computer science, and basic science at Virginia Tech Carilion Medical School, analyzed an often ignored part of the human genome -- repetitive DNA sequences referred to as microsatellites.
Over 1 million microsatellites exist in the human genome, including in neural crest tissues, a thin layer of cells within an embryo that contains genetic instructions to build hundreds of cell types, from neurons to adrenal cells.
When cells migrate from the neural crest, researchers say the instructions may become garbled, causing cancer cells to emerge. Neurological tumors, for example, may arise from glial cells that develop from the crest.
Researchers with the institute's Medical Informatics Systems Division say cancer types can be found or predicted from specific markers within these repetitive sequences, known as cancer-associated microsatellite loci, or CAML.
Long considered "junk DNA" or "dark matter" within the genome because their function was unclear, microsatellites are known for their role in certain diseases such as Fragile X and Huntington's disease.
Garner's group has shown that these regions can be informative about diseases ranging from cancer to autism spectrum disorder.
With more study, researchers believe interrelated hereditary and genetic traits of certain cancers can be traced to their common origin at the neural crest, leading to potentially better therapies and easier tumor identification.
The findings have been licensed to Genomeon, a company co-founded by Garner to develop new ways to assess cancer risk, create diagnostics, and explore potential drug targets to help cancer patients.
INFORMATION:
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LAWRENCE -- We've all been there. Occasionally, in the midst of a conversation, our mind flashes blank, and it's impossible to conjure the word for a thing, place or person. We'll gesture with our hands and feel like we're on the verge of remembering. But the word won't come.
It's a predicament language researchers dub the "tip of the tongue" state.
"These states are interesting for a few reasons," said Michael Vitevitch, professor of psychology at the University of Kansas and investigator with KU's Life Span Institute. "They tell us how the language system is built ...
Here's the summary of a new research report appearing in the August 2015 issue of The FASEB Journal: Prolonged spaceflight may give you a nasty case of diarrhea. Specifically, when mice were subjected to simulated spaceflight conditions, the balance of bacteria and the function of immune cells in the gut changed, leading to increased bowel inflammation.
"Our study provides useful insights on the cross-regulation of the mucosal immune system, epithelial barrier and commensal bacteria not only in humans in spaceflight or analog, but also in humans on earth that undergo ...
If you are watching what you eat, working out, and still not seeing improvements in your cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, etc., here's some hope. A new report appearing in the August 2015 issue of The FASEB Journal suggests that inflammation induced by deficiencies in vitamins and minerals might be the culprit. In this report, researchers show that - in some people - improvement results in many of the major markers of health when nutritional deficiencies are corrected. Some even lost weight without a change in their diet or levels of activity.
"It is well known ...
Here's another reason to put the salt shaker down: New research in mice shows that diets high in sodium may be a novel risk factor in the development of multiple sclerosis (MS) by influencing immune cells that cause the disease. Although this research does implicate salt intake as a risk factor, it is important to note that dietary salt is likely just one of the many environmental factors contributing to this complex disease, and very much influenced by one's genetic background. This finding was published in the August 2015 issue of The FASEB Journal.
"We hope to provide ...
Seven articles dealing with the conservation of monarch butterflies were published on August 5 in Annals of the Entomological Society of America. Along with this collection, there is a new paper from American Entomologist on the conservation of Karner blue butterflies (Lycaeides melissa samuelis), an endangered species with a one-inch wingspan, which are the focus of a cutting-edge recovery program in Wisconsin that has become a model for other recovery plans for imperiled species.
As AESA editor-in-chief Lawrence E. Hurd, Ph.D., said of the collection: "This group of ...
Chicago, August 5, 2015 - Patients undergoing surgery for lung cancer may wait too long to receive treatment, and too many patients skip vital diagnostic steps that are needed to help determine the best possible treatment, according to study published in the August 2015 issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.
Key points:
Patients who undergo surgery for lung cancer often wait too long to receive treatment, and too many patients skip vital diagnostic steps that are needed to help determine the best possible treatment;
Only 1 in 10 patients had the recommended combination ...
CAMBRIDGE, Mass--One big problem faced by electrodes in rechargeable batteries, as they go through repeated cycles of charging and discharging, is that they must expand and shrink during each cycle -- sometimes doubling in volume, and then shrinking back. This can lead to repeated shedding and reformation of its "skin" layer that consumes lithium irreversibly, degrading the battery's performance over time.
Now a team of researchers at MIT and Tsinghua University in China has found a novel way around that problem: creating an electrode made of nanoparticles with a solid ...
Many patients with bipolar disorder, a debilitating mental condition that can take a person from the sluggishness of severe depression to super-human energy levels, are often misdiagnosed as having major depressive disorder, or MDD. But now as an alternative to reliance on patient interviews, scientists are closing in on an objective test that could help clinicians distinguish between the two -- and provide better treatment. Their method appears in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research.
For many reasons, bipolar disorder is commonly mistaken for MDD. One reason is that the ...
People ignore daily alcohol guidelines as they are deemed irrelevant to occasional drinkers
Findings show drinkers prefer Canadian and Australian guidelines
Research may be used to inform new policies in the future
The Government's current alcohol guidelines are unrealistic and largely ignored because they have little relevance to people's drinking habits, according to a new report by the University of Sheffield's Alcohol Research Group (SARG) in collaboration with the University of Stirling.
The study, which is the first of its kind, explored how drinkers make ...
Scientists at the University of York have shed new light on how humans process colour - revealing that we see things differently in winter compared with summer.
The researchers examined how our colour perception changes between seasons and in particular how we process the colour known as unique yellow.
Humans identify four unique hues - blue, green, yellow and red - that do not appear to contain mixtures of other colours.
Unique yellow is particularly interesting to scientists as it is stable across large populations - everyone agrees what unique yellow looks like despite ...
