The First Child Without Cancer Gene

In the UK, with the participation of scientists from the Institute of Genetics of Spain has been born the world's first genetically modeled child. 27-year-old woman gave birth to a girl who lacks a gene mutation that can lead to later development of breast cancer. According to the doctor Paul Serhala, mother and baby feel good: "This family got what is cancer, for many generations. She was very concerned about the possibility of occurrence and a child of this deadly disease. Then they decided from the beginning to hold some tests of the state of the embryo, a group of cells and select those that do not bear any genetic abnormalities."

The carrier of "bad" gene is the father of the girl. As a result of a successful operation the child is no longer at risk of falling ill breast cancer suffered by her grandmother, cousin, mother and sister, father, when they got over the 20 years of age. The threat of disease in a child's family, according to experts, is 80%, and sex of a newborn does not matter. Only in the UK the are about 37 thousand women who carry the gene of breast cancer, almost twice as much - in Spain.

The girl developed by scientists selected from an embryo, an analysis of which showed the absence of the gene, with which the risk of terrible disease ranges from 50% to 85%.

Meanwhile, with the challenge to provide a gene that can suppress the growth of cancerous tumors, the world's medicine is busy is not the first year. And in this respect there is considerable progress.

Thus, the opening of the genes responsible for the development of breast cancer belongs to the European oncology. The first successes in this field were made back in 80 years of the last century, when succeeded to identify two "defective" genes. But these days scientists from Iceland have announced the opening of a new gene called BARD1. In combination with already known genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, it greatly increases the likelihood of developing breast cancer. This disease is diagnosed annually at a 1.2 million women in the world and leads to death of 400 thousand patients.

"Cancer" gene has been successfully identified by American doctors also. On their point of view, this gene is also responsible for the aging of our body, and we should not consider it as our enemy. With age "gene age" gradually reduces the ability of stem cells to divide, leading to, ultimately, aging and death of the organism. However, whether this is a bad thing?

"I do not think that aging - this is a random process: rather, it is a program to prevent cancer," - states one of the leading participants in the research project Dr. Norman Sharpless of the University of South Carolina.

The study, which is the result of many years of work of three research teams from the University of South Carolina, the University of Michigan and Harvard School of Medicine, focused on studying the properties of a gene called p16-Ink4a, which plays a crucial role in shaping anti cancerous protection of the organism.

We know that with age the development of one of the proteins that make up the gene is significantly increased and the 70-year-old man it is produced ten times more than the 20-year-old. Why?

Scientists interested in the impact that the deactivation of the gene will have on the three groups of cells: stem cells of blood, brain cells and pancreas cells which produce insulin. Experiments on mice showed: disabling the gene leads to a sharp increasing of the ability to cell division of all three types. In other words, they were like forever young.

But laboratory rodents have been totally vulnerable to cancer - they all died of cancer in the first year of life. Increasing the activity of the gene p16-Ink4a, conversely, causes the aging of stem cells and the gradual loss of their ability to reproduce. But the risk of falling ill with cancer is significantly reduced. So the adage "getting old is no fun" is true only in part.

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