ANN ARBOR, Mich. - A 10-year study involving thousands of Israeli Jews and Arabs, led by researchers from American and Israeli institutions, has yielded important new information in the search for the genes that make a person more likely to develop colon cancer.
In a paper to be published in the July issue of Cancer Biology and Therapy, the international research team reports finding a significant link between genetic variation in a single region of human chromosome 8 and the risk of colorectal cancer.
The link was found by detailed comparisons of genetic material from thousands of colon cancer patients and non-patients, and by evaluating the incidence of colon cancer among the immediate family members of colon cancer patients.
In all, people who carry the specific genetic variation, called a marker, were found to be 23 percent more likely to have colon cancer than individuals without the marker. The researchers estimate that this single genetic variation might account for 14 percent of colorectal cancer cases in Israel, where colon cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths. The specific marker is called the C allele of rs10505477.
Three other research teams are reporting similar findings today in the journal Nature Genetics, having simultaneously found their way to the same small area of chromosome 8, called 8q24, in the search for colon cancer genetic links. The fact that these studies were performed among other populations around the world suggests that this one genetic marker is highly influential across ethnic groups.
The new Cancer Biology and Therapy paper is by an international group of scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School and U-M School of Public Health, the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Spain, the CHS National Israeli Cancer Control Center and Technion - the Israel Institute of Technology.
Its the product of an ongoing Michigan-Israel collaboration, the Molecular
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Contact: Nicole Fawcett
nfawcett@umich.edu
734-764-2220
University of Michigan Health System
8-Jul-2007