By Frank D. Roylance , frank.roylance@baltsun.com|September 05, 2008
Researchers cataloging the genetic codes of deadly human brain and pancreatic cancers say they have found several dozen defective genes that appear to work in concert to set off the tumor growth that eventually kills their victims.
The team, at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, said their discoveries provide new insights that could lead to earlier detection of such tumors through genetic blood tests and to new cancer-fighting drugs. The findings also could lead to more efficient strategies for interrupting the genetic processes that lead to tumor growth.
Dr. Kenneth Kinzler, an oncology professor at Hopkins and a co-author of the twin studies published yesterday in the online journal Sciencexpress, called the discoveries "a milestone in the fight against two of the most lethal human cancers."
The research team at Hopkins is the same one that announced in 2006 that they had deciphered the genetic codes of breast and colon tumors.
Since then, the scientists said, efforts have been launched at Hopkins and at "all the major pharmaceutical companies" to find ways to interrupt the uncontrolled genetic pathways revealed by their research.
The two Hopkins papers - one each on the genetics of pancreatic cancer and glioblastomas, the fast-growing brain cancer diagnosed in Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy this summer - will appear later this month in the print editions of the journal Science .
Another team of scientists published a related paper on the genetics of brain tumors in today's edition of the journal Nature. That work was done by scientists at 18 different centers with funding from the National Institutes of Health. The work at Hopkins was funded privately by the Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Genome Initiative and the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Foundation.
Dr. Anna D. Barker, deputy director of the National Cancer Institute at NIH, said the two projects are important in "setting the stage" for therapies tailored for each individual's genetic code.
"I think these studies are likely to be defining the cancer programs of our time," she said, "because they actually take the product of what we know about the human genome and apply them in a practical way to understanding diseases as complicated as cancer."
Real clinical applications are "closer than I think anyone would have thought," Barker said. Some cancer therapies may change "almost immediately."
