|
|
Article: Skin cells may act as early warning for cancer
- Article from:
- The Hindustan Times
- Article date:
- October 16, 2009
CopyrightCopyright © HT Media Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
|
Washington, Oct. 16 -- Cancer is such a complex genetic disease that one has to sequence a person's complete genome in order to predict his or her risk. But a recent study reveals that the risk may be more simply determined by inexpensively culturing a few skin cells.
Harry Rubin, professor emeritus of molecular and cell biology at University of California-Berkeley (UC-B), acknowledges that cancer cells have mutations in hundreds of genes, making it hard to determine which are key triggers and making prognosis and treatment equally difficult.
But Rubin argues that, while it may be hard to dissect the role of each of these mutations, their collective effect should be observable in tissue ...