Cancer researchers are just beginning to understand the ramifications of the fundamental discoveries behind the 2015 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, which were awarded on Wednesday to three scientists for explaining how cells repair mistakes in DNA that occur when cells divide. When deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) repair mechanisms fail, they predispose people to cancer. That is especially true of individuals with mismatch repair defects, a mechanism discovered by Paul Modrich of Duke University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Modrich, Tomas Lindahl and Aziz Sancar won the prize for “mechanistic studies of DNA repair.” Their work mapped how cells repair DNA to prevent damaging errors from appearing in genetic information. Subsequent work by Dr. Bert Vogelstein of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and Richard Kolodner, then at Harvard Medical School and currently at the University of California, San Diego, showed mismatch repair defects are the chief cause of the most common inherited form of colorectal cancer, affecting 15 percent of colon cancer patients. These defects may now help predict which patients are most likely to benefit from immunotherapies, promising new drugs that enlist the immune system to fight cancers. A small study published earlier this year in the New England…
- Best DNA test for 2021: AncestryDNA vs. 23andMe and more
- 'Breakthrough' drug called niraparib that halts ovarian cancer gives a supermarket worker, 56, new life as daily pill keeps her disease at bay for several years
- Britain faces even MORE super-Covid variants: Global surge of cases is fueling more chances for the virus to mutate to beat immune system and vaccines, scientists warn
- New avenues to novel drugs open up
- 4-stranded DNA's activity in living cells unraveled for 1st time
- 'Many times we miss the cancer symptoms'
- Cancer vaccine helped keep melanoma under control for years in small study
- 'Quantum leap' in fight against ovarian cancer: Experts hail biggest improvement in treatment for 30 years as drug that can halt the disease for 12 months gets approval
- I had 3 years left to live after ovarian cancer diagnosis – but new drug gave me my life back
- Powerful Ideas: Fungus Sex Forced for Fuel
Nobel discoveries on DNA repair now fueling cancer drug research have 338 words, post on at October 8, 2015. This is cached page on X-Buy. If you want remove this page, please contact us.