�An belligerent childhood learning ability tumor known as medulloblastoma originates in normal mentality "stem" cells that turn malignant when acted on by a known mutant, cancer-causing transforming gene, say researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Reporting in the Aug. 12 issue of Cancer Cell, the scientists say they have uncovered new origins for these tumors from early stem turn cells as well as more mature cells. Previously, scientists had assumed the tumors might only come from a single source: more grow cells which become neurons and do not accept "stem" prison cell properties. The findings clue at potential new intervention approaches for medulloblastoma by targeting the origins of the tumors, and farther suggest that not all patients' tumors may be born from the same cells.
"We instantly have a better idea of where these psyche tumors come from and their relationship to normal stem cells in the brain," aforesaid Keith Ligon, MD, PhD, co-senior author of the report and an investigator at the Center for Molecular Oncologic Pathology at Dana-Farber and the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Co-senior writer, David Rowitch, MD, PhD, currently a professor of pediatrics and neurosurgery at UCSF and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute tec, commented that mouse experiments shed light on how normal shank cells -- cells with the might to make all types of cells in the brain -- can be transformed into tumors. The transformation occurs when a cell-signaling nerve pathway known as Sonic porcupine (named for a sketch character) is reactivated by a hazard mutation.
Sonic porcupine plays an important persona during the embryonic development of the brain, but normally shuts down when it's no longer needed. When turned on over again by a mutation, the signals canful trigger cell processes leading to tumors -- non just in the psyche, but in other organs as well.
Medulloblastomas, usually diagnosed in children between 2 and 5 years of age, strike the brain's cerebellum region, which is involved in controlling body movements. They make up about 30 percent of childhood brain tumors, and account for 250 to 300 new cases per year.
With current treatments, some 60 to 70 percentage of patients live at least basketball team years, only often they are left with cognitive disabilities from surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, urgently suggesting a need for new, more-selective therapies.
"Medulloblastoma was one of the first tumors that was believed to fit the hypothesis that tumors ar caused by 'cancer shank cells' that initiate malignancies and nurture them," aforesaid Ligon, world Health Organization is also on faculty and an assistant prof at Harvard Medical School. "But the prevailing theory -- that medulloblastomas originate from non-stem cells just did
