A team of scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has identified a gene that can cause multiple benign tumors of the parathyroid and pituitary glands, as well as islet cell tumors leading to pancreatic cancer. Their discovery of the gene for multiple endocrine neoplasia, type 1 (MEN1), is reported in the April 18 issue of the journal Science.
As a result of the discovery, doctors will soon be able to screen families at risk for MEN1 more easily and eliminate periodic blood tests for those with normal MEN1 genes. They hope to learn from MEN1 and its protein product, called menin, how endocrine tumors and cancers grow. The discovery also provides a target for the design of drugs to prevent or treat both benign and malignant endocrine tumors.
The MEN1 gene, a tumor suppressor gene--a gene that inhibits abnormal cell growth--intrigues researchers because it is unlike any of the tumor suppressors currently known, according toAllen Spiegel, M.D., scientific director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), which initiated the work.
"Its broad function is to inhibit cell growth, somehow," adds senior investigator Stephen J. Marx, M.D., also of NIDDK, "but in fact, it is unlike any human protein we have seen. It's a real black box."
Drs. Marx and Spiegel collaborated with Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and Settara C. Chandrasekharappa, Ph.D., also of NHGRI, and Lance Liotta, M.D., Ph.D., and Michael Emmert-Buck , M.D., Ph.D., of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to find and capture the gene.
"This gene could indicate the presence of an entirely new pathway for the control of cell growth," says Dr. Collins.
MEN1 is expressed throughout the body, not just in the endocrine glands as scientists might have predicted based on the endocrine tumors characteristic of the disease. The researchers
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Contact: Jane DeMouy
DeMouyJ@hq.niddk.nih.gov
301-435-8115
NIH/National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
17-Apr-1997