Predicting cancer’s spread
Harvard researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) have found that a way that it may be possible to predict whether human melanoma tumors are likely to spread. The scientists report in the July 12 edition of the journal Cancer Cell that they have identified a number of cancer genes that endow the tumor with the ability to metastasize and in testing in melanoma skin cancer, they found six abnormal genes that are both cancer-causing and metastasis-promoting. And one of those genes, ACP5, can be used to predict whether human melanoma tumors are likely to spread. “Early-stage melanomas are often cured by surgical removal, but in about 10 percent of patients who undergo surgery and are considered cancer-free, the disease recurs in metastatic form and becomes fatal,” says the paper’s senior author, Lynda Chin, a Harvard Medical School professor of dermatology at DFCI and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “The goal of this study...