Source: Xinhua
04-21-2009 09:34
Special Report: Tech MaxBEIJING, April 20 (Xinhuanet) -- Scientists have found the cause of an inherited form of a rare type of childhood cancer and how the cancer develops, representing a whole new mechanism.
The researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the International Pleuropulmonary Blastoma Registry at Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota and other collaborating institutions, found that children with a rare, aggressive form of lung cancer called pleuropulmonary blastoma, or PPB, are born with a mutation in DICER1, itself a master controller gene that helps regulate other genes.
They also found children with PPB have normal-looking cells in their lungs that appear to cause neighboring cells to turn cancerous.
The results were presented Monday at the American Association for Cancer Research 100th Annual Meeting 2009 in Denver, Colorado.
PPB is the first malignancy found to be directly associated with inherited DICER1 mutations, making the cancer an important model for understanding how mutations and loss of DICER1 function lead to cancer," says lead author D. Ashley Hill, M.D., chief of pathology at Children's National Medical Center.
