New York, Janaury 25 An international team of scientists believes it has found cancer’s master switch with the discovery of a gene they dubbed ‘‘Pokemon.’’
Like the electronic game figures —— tiny monsters with bad tempers —— the cancer-triggering gene apparently instigates the misbehavior of other cancer-causing genes, leading to tumor formation.
In Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature, researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, in collaboration with teams in Japan and Britain, announced that the gene plays a key role in starting a malignancy. As a result, scientists now believe they have stumbled upon an important new target for an anti-cancer drug.
Dr. Carlos Cardon-Cardo, a molecular pathologist at the cancer center and a senior author of the research, defined Pokemon as an oncogene, which means it is capable of causing cancer. Dozens of oncogenes have been discovered over the past 25 years. But unlike the others, Cardon-Cardo said Pokemon has a governing role: It is needed for other genes to function. Eliminate Pokemon, he said, and you stop the activity of other cancer-causing genes.
‘‘This is the master switch that interacts with other genes,’’ Cardon-Cardo said. ‘‘It acts differently than other oncogenes. Others regulate cell growth, but Pokemon impacts on critical properties of cancer cells.’’ Among those key properties, Pokemon enhances a cancer cell’s ability to resist aging and death. This immortalizing factor essentially endows cancer cells with a Peter Pan-like quality that renders them robust indefinitely, the very trait that makes tumors difficult to treat. —LAT-WP
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