ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 2, 1996 TAG: 9611040042
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
With the extra $30 million President Clinton has promised for breast cancer genetic research next year, scientists hope to locate cancer-causing genes, understand the mechanisms that trigger them and figure out ways to halt cancers early.
The plan underscores scientists' growing belief that the war against cancer will likely be won on a genetic battlefield.
``Cancer is a genetic disease,'' emphasized Mark Skolnick, a scientist at Myriad Genetics, a biotechnology company in Salt Lake City. In 1994, Skolnick was one of the discoverers of the first breast cancer gene.
The government estimates that breast cancer will cause some 44,000 deaths this year.
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health said this week that they were not yet certain which projects would be assigned the new funds. The NIH, which spends about $60 million on breast cancer genetic research, will be in charge of about a third of the new money. It will collaborate with Defense Department scientists on the remainder, according to officials.
``This step represents a major increase in breast cancer genetic research,'' Clinton said last weekend. ``It will ensure the development of this promising new research and bring us that much closer to a cure.''
About 184,000 new cases of breast cancer are identified each year, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The focus on genetics follows the discovery over the past two years of two inherited genes that cause breast cancer when they are altered. Although these genes are implicated in a relatively small number of all breast cancers, scientists believe they may point the way to other cancer-causing genes, or be implicated with others in causing the other cancers.
``All cancers involve mutations in tumor-suppressor genes which normally keep a cell under control and increase the expression of oncogenes,'' genes that can make cells cancerous, Skolnick said.
Cells multiply under direction from these genes. Normally, genes that encourage cells to multiply and those that make them stop balance each other so that the number of cells produced is exactly what the body needs. Cancer sets in when this balance is destroyed. The genes that trigger cell production get out of control and begin producing huge numbers of cells, forming deadly masses and sometimes spreading to other parts of the body.
Until recent advances put genetics at the forefront of cancer research, scientists were focused on radiation therapies, drugs or triggers to the immune system.
The genetic approach reasons that even though the environmental triggers of cancer are diverse - everything from cigarette smoking to hormones to natural wear and tear - cancer is caused only when alterations in the genetic code accumulate or when inherited cancer-causing genes get activated.
``If we know what the genetic changes are that have to occur to result in breast cancer, we may be able to identify when those changes are occurring and might be able to reverse those changes,'' said Gordon Mills, a geneticist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Barbara Weber, a top breast cancer geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, pointed out that the history of cancer treatment showed that finding an outright cure was unlikely - scientists were more likely to make small improvements in treating patients, or in predicting who may be at risk.
``It's going to be a gradual process. They will evolve over time.''
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