Researchers at the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute have described an epigenetic lesion that causes in breast cancer the “aberrant activity” of a hundred genes associated with the development of human tumors.
“We have discovered that, in breast cancer, but also in other tumor types, there is a silencing of the Celf2 gene that has the usual job of controlling that from each gene a correct product is born for this normal tissue,” explained Manel Esteller, director from high school.
The inactivation of this gene causes the appearance of “many molecules created with‘ cut and paste “mechanisms that do not fit the mammary gland and have an aberrant function such as helping to immortalize cancer cells.
Likewise, they have found that patients with breast cancer with this defect in Celf2 tend to have worse survival, “probably associated with the fact that they have lost the physiological ability to inhibit excessive tissue division,” notes Esteller.
In this sense, the alteration identified is added to that of other genes of the same family in other solid and hematological tumors, which have aroused interest in the preclinical development of drugs that act on them.
The article describing this alteration that changes the activity of a hundred genes has been published in the magazine ‘Oncogene’.