Print
Email
Print Edition StoriesFriday, April 2, 2010
Yale: Cell memory of DNA damage contributes to cancer
By Mass High Tech staff
MHT's Julie Donnelly: Biotechs lag in social media use
MHT's Julie Donnelly: Pharmaceuticals find drug development partners in colleges
Funding drugs for rare diseases
Researchers from Yale University’s school of medicine have discovered a cell’s ability to “remember” damage done to its DNA and to communicate the extent of its damage to other cells in the same tissue.
Studying the long-term consequences of DNA damage in cells, Yale researchers found that the ability to remember the DNA damage, caused by radiation or other factors, causes a competition among cells for survival. This allows healthy cells with lower amounts of the tumor-suppressing protein p53 to multiply and replace damaged cells with high levels of p53 activity.
But a cell with mutated p53 loses the ability to remember and report damage, giving them an advantage over healthy cells. The researchers believe this helps the mutated cells reproduce by the millions, eventually leading to cancer.
The study is published in the online ediion of the journal Cell Stem Cell. The research was lead by Ruslan Medzhitov, a professor of immunobiology at Yale and a member of the Yale Cancer Center. The research was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Comments
If you are commenting using a Facebook account, your profile information may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the 'Post to Facebook' box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to the space below.
RSS Feeds
