A gene for familial pancreatic cancer finally found!

Hope for improved treatments as researchers discover the genetic cause of familial pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer – at least ten per cent of which is thought to be caused by inherited genetic mutations – is the fifth most common cause of cancer mortality in the UK. Yet the genes responsible for this largely fatal disease have so far remained elusive. Now the genetic cause of familial pancreatic cancer has been discovered by an Anglo-American team of researchers.

Dr Tatjana Crnogorac-Jurcevic, Senior Lecturer in Cancer Genomics at Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, and her colleague Dr Sally Dowen, are among a group led by the University of Washington’s Professor Teri Brentnall, to have discovered that the gene palladin, when mutated, causes familial pancreatic cancer. The research, published online in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS-Medicine in December 2006, may help explain how the disease develops and why it is so deadly.

Dr Tatjana Crnogorac-Jurcevic said: "The identification of palladin as a 'pancreatic cancer gene' significantly improves our understanding of the disease and may help in designing new diagnostic methods and treatments that can finally make an impact on this major killer.”

More information including video interviews with Prof Brentnall:
University of Washington - Pancreatic Cancer News