New blood biomarker to predict cancer spread 10Feb

Recent research came up with a new blood biomarker that has a high accuracy of predicting the spread of prostate cancer to other parts of the body through the lymph nodes. Such spreading of cancer cells are usually not detected by conventional imaging methods like CT scans. This new blood test measures the level of endoglin, a plasma biomarker which was also studied to predict the spread of colon and breast cancer.

The levels of endoglin in the blood were associated with increased risk of cancer cells spreading to the lymph nodes. Each 1ng/mL increase of plasma endoglin increases the risk of cancer spread by 17 percent.

600 million year old cancer gene discovered

Biochemists and biologists at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, have retraced the function of an important human cancer gene 600 million years back in time.

For the first time, they have identified the oncogene 'myc' in a freshwater microorganism and have shown that this oncogene has similar biochemical functions in ancestral metazoan and in humans. The scientists published their findings in PNAS.

The myc gene plays an important role in the growth of organisms. It produces a protein that acts as a gene regulator, which controls the expression of up to 15 % of all human genes. This means that it controls whether these genes are activated or deactivated.

A deregulation of the myc gene leads to uncontrolled cell proliferation and to cancer; a deregulated myc gene occurs in about 30% of all human cancers.

“To get a better understanding of the deregulation process caused by the oncogene, we would have to know which genes are regulated by myc and which of these are important for cancers“, says Klaus Bister from the Institute of Biochemistry at the University of Innsbruck.

Due to the complexity of the human organism, researchers use simpler model systems for their experiments, whose results may then be translated to humans. The Innsbruck scientific teams of Klaus Bister, Markus Hartl and Bert Hobmayer have, for the first time, identified the oncogene in a fresh water polyp (Hydra) and they have shown that it has very similar functions when compared with humans.