From Sciencedaily.com:

Researchers at Texas A&M say a protein long suspected of playing a role in Down syndrome may hold the key to understanding breast cancer.

The observation comes as people with Down syndrome are benefiting from improved medical care and are living longer, healthier lives. Their longer lifespans have allowed scientists to note that people with Down syndrome are much less likely to get tumor-based cancers than other people. Most striking is the fact that women with Down syndrome are 10-25 times less likely to develop breast cancer.

“Years of research into the genetics of Down Syndrome have helped us to discover a very important gene on chromosome 21,” said Dr. Weston Porter, associate professor in the Veterinary Integrative Biosciences Department. “This gene, called Single-minded 2 or SIM2 is thought to play an important role in Down Syndrome by regulating neuron growth in the developing brain. Based on its developmental role, we hypothesized that SIM2 may also be involved in breast cancer, which is essentially a disease of uncontrolled growth.”

Porter and colleagues have recently published articles about the protein in the journals Molecular and Cellular Biology and Carcinogenesis.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Down syndrome, cancer, research news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post