Scientists disclose formula for cancer resistance

Scotland, February 3: A latest research by a team of scientists at the University of Dundee and Singapore claims to have unraveled a missing link in the manner in which cells guard themselves against cancerdefine.

Researchers have found the way cells switch the p53 gene that is responsible for blocking growth of tumours intermittently.

Discovered 30 years back, the p53 gene plays a significant part in maintaining a healthy body by either directing the damaged cells to commit suicide or by terminating their division while vital repair work is on.

The gene is damaged or dormant in about 50 percent of all cancers, thus allowing the damaged cells to continue dividing and result in cancerdefine.

For the research purposes, scientists employed a genetic trick so as to turn zebrafish green upon switching p53 gene. This was done to see the manner in which it was regulated. They discovered that besides making the p53 gene also makes a “control switch” variation of the protein called isoform.

Lesley Walker, director of Cancer Research, U.K., was quoted as saying, “This is a really exciting study which improves our understanding of how the p53 gene works. Discovering how it is regulated will have incredibly important implications in the development of better drugs and ways to diagnose cancer.”

Typically zebrafish, which have the p53 gene similar to the one in humans, can resist small doses of radiationdefine that harm the DNA, as the gene intervenes to repair the damage. But zebrafish without the isoform switch succumbs to the radiation exposure.

Professor Sir David Lane, research team, remarked, “The function of p53 is critical to the way that many cancer treatments kill cells since radiotherapy and chemotherapy act in part by triggering cell suicide in response to DNA damage. So understanding more about how this gene is controlled in cells is really important in finding ways to prevent cells from turning cancerous.”