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January 24th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda SUNDAY, Jan. 22 (HealthDay News) — Researchers have identified three
new genomic regions they believe are linked with breast cancer that may
help explain why some women develop the disease.
All three newly identified areas “contain interesting genes that open
up new avenues for biological and clinical research,” said researcher
Douglas Easton, a professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of
Cambridge in England.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, with about 1
million new cases annually worldwide and more than 400,000 deaths a year.
Scientists conducting genome-wide association studies — research that
looks at the association between genetic factors and disease to pinpoint
possible causes — had already identified 22 breast cancer susceptibility
loci. Locus is the physical location of a gene or DNA sequence on a
chromosome.
“The three [newly identified] loci take the number of common
susceptibility loci from 22 to 25,” said Easton.
However, the three new susceptibility loci might explain only about 0.7
percent of the familial risks of breast cancer, bringing the total
contribution to about 9 percent, the researchers said.
Michael Melner, scientific program director for the American Cancer
Society, said this current research adds some important new clues to
existing evidence, but he agreed that the number of cases likely
associated with these three variants is probably low.
“So the total impact in terms of patients would be fairly small,”
Melner said.
The study is published online Jan. 22 in Nature Genetics.
To find the new clues, Easton’s team worked with genetic information on
about 57,000 breast cancer patients and 58,000 healthy women obtained from
two genome-wide association studies.
The investigators zeroed in on 72 different single nucleotide
polymorphisms (SNPs). A SNP — pronounced “snip” — is a change in which
a single base in the DNA differs from the usual base. The human genome has
millions of SNPs, some linked with disease, while others are normal
variations.
The researchers focused on three SNPs — on chromosomes 12p11, 12q24
and 21q21.
Easton’s team found that the variant on the 12p11 chromosome is linked
with both estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer (which needs estrogen
to grow) and estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer. The other two
variants are only linked with ER-positive cancers, they said.
One of the newly identified variants is in an area with a gene that has
a role in the development of mammary glands and bones. Easton said it was
already known that mammary gland development in puberty is an important
period in terms of determining later cancer risk. “But these are the first
susceptibility genes to be shown to be involved in this process,” he said.
One of the other SNPs is in an area that can affect estrogen receptor
signaling, the researchers found.
Melner, noting some of the research is “fine tuning” of other work,
said in his view the new understanding of the signaling pathways and their
genetic links is the most important finding.
“When you delineate a pathway, you bring up new potential targets for
therapy,” he said. “The more targets you have, you open up the potential
for having multiple drugs and attacking a cancer more easily, without it
becoming more resistant.”
Overall, Melner added, the results underscore the complexity of the
different mechanisms involved in breast cancer development.
More information
For more about the genetics of breast cancer, visit the American Cancer Society.
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