The Faster I Run, the Behinder I Get

At lunch today with a friend and fellow cancer survivor, I learned a new term, actually several new terms, but the one that caught my ear was "epigenetics." In an earlier post, I commented on the importance of genetics to cancer treatment. It turns out that the treatment you chose may also modify the way your genes are expressed after treatment - that is, the treatment may modify the patient's genetic DNA structure.

In effect, once you begin treatment, you become a moving target for subsequent treatments. This is good when the effect is limited to DNA in (already mutated) cancerous cells, but may not be beneficial treatment result in DNA modifications which inhibit subsequent treatment or, in the case of a patient of child-bearing age, if the induced mutated DNA is subsequently passed on to the next generation.

In other words, "epigenetics" is the study of a repetitive process of induced DNA mutation resulting from all kinds of sources, including the food you eat, your life style, and cancer treatments involving radiation and chemotherapy.

As the below video will demonstrate, although identical twins have the same DNA structure at birth, their genetic structure grows increasingly dissimilar over time due to environmental factors. For more information, view this video (13 minutes) from Nova scienceNOW at pbs.org, which produced the video, and visit their web site.

New Web Links

Please see the sidebar for the new melanoma web links added today.

More about Genetics and Melanoma

In addition to the Genetic Profiling link in the Sidebar to an article about the work a Mass General, there was a brief article in the June6, 2009 Wall Street Journal, which illustrates why genetic profiling is valuable for cancer treatments. The article by Ron Winslow, "Skin-Cancer Drug Uses Genetics," reports that "... nine of 16 patients with the malignant skin cancer (melanoma) experienced significant shrinkage of their tumors when given a drug know as PLX4032," which is being developed by Roche Holding AG and Plexxicon, Inc.

The genetically signicant fact is that all of the tumors treated had "... a mutation in a gene for a protein called BRAF that is believed to play a critical role in up to 60% of patients with the cancer." The drug is one of a class of emerging products called BRAF-inhibitors. Although the role of the BRAF mutation has been known since 2002, to date there has been little success in efforst to target the defect.

It's too early to tell whether or not this newest effort will prove out, but, to me, it makes the effort at Mass General even more important and gives me some ammunition with which to prod my oncologists and the barest hint of a ray of hope for the future.

C'mon guys, keep kicking in those bucks for cancer research!