The Human Genome Project has begun to spawn some remarkable findings that may soon revolutionize the way we treat cancer and other currently life-threatening diseases. As one of the most recent examples, a team of researchers from the National Institutes of Health has just identified a new gene that appears to inhibit the growth of certain cancers.
Tumor suppressor genes act like brakes to regulate the growth and multiplication of normal cells.
However, when they are missing or not working properly, cells can become cancerous and grow out of control. The ST7 gene appears to specifically regulate the production of new blood vessels, they wrote, which are necessary for tumors to survive. Zenklusen's team believes that the ST7 gene, which they located on chromosome 7, may be involved in a wide range of cancers, including breast, colon. But it does not appear to be involved in lymphomas, they said, which are cancers that do not require the growth of new blood vessels. The researchers lauded data from the Human Genome Project, which they said was essential to their finding of the ST7 gene.