From the Dana Farber Institute today , at the same time the Nobel prize in Medicine was awarded to two American physicans for discovery of genetic on-off switches is the discovery that lurking in unexplored regions of the human genome are thousands of previously unknown on/off switches that may influence how the growth of breast cancer is driven by estrogen, new research by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers has revealed.
Investigators present the first complete map of the molecular "control panels" – stretches of DNA that turn genes on and off – operated by the cells' estrogen receptor, the master regulator of cell growth in the most common form of breast cancer. The map, which includes thousands of such control regions, provides scientists with a new tool for understanding how genes are regulated, and may eventually help doctors match patients with treatments that are most likely to be effective for them and overcome the problem of resistance to current hormone therapies, the study authors say.
Hopefully understanding these switches may lead to prevention, not just treatment.
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