New Technique Developed to Control Cervical Cancer Medical Xpress
go to original January 30, 2014

How do cancer cells grow? How does chemotherapy fight cancer (and cause negative side effects)? The answers lie in cell division. George Zaidan explains how rapid cell division is cancer's "strength" - and also its weakness. Lesson by George Zaidan, animation by TED-Ed. (TED-Ed)

A group of researchers from Mexico's General Hospital, Health Secretariat, Medicine Faculty and the Institute of Cellular Physiology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) identified a therapeutic target for cervix cancer: gene CDKN3.

The researched performed at the lab indicates that when this gene is blocked in culture cancerous cells, the neoplastic proliferation greatly diminishes.

Jaime Berumen Campos, who coordinates the research said that this gene is blocked by a "siRNA" (small interference RNA), molecular technique applied to several strands of cervix cancer cells making them incapable of proliferating, and confirmed that tumors in mice stopped growing.

To achieve this, researchers first analyzed eight thousand and 638 genes in 43 samples of cervix cancer cells, identifies six suspect of making cervical cancer grow.

One of these genes is CDKN3, which apparently is the most important, given that its activity was highly elevated in most of explored cancers.

Read the rest at Medical Xpress

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