Nature Genetics has published a report by scientists in US and Sweden who have discovered how a variant of the BRCA 1 gene helps breast cancer to grow by knocking out a tumor suppressor gene called PTEN.
The link between BRCA 1 and breast cancer was established 10 years ago but questions have been asked as to why this gene causes breast cancer.
PTEN is a key tumor suppressor gene which is knocked out in breast, brain and prostate cancers. PTEN mutations are second only to p53 as being the most frequently present in all cancers, affecting about 30% of them.
Once a cell loses PTEN it …read more