GENES IN OVARIAN CANCER: (part I)

The notion that there is a particular gene or genes for a specific cancer is attractive, but most of the time only reflects the scientists' tendency to attract the community interest on their findings.  There is nothing wrong with that because their work needs recognition. Recent advances in cure and novel therapeutic approaches have occurred to convince the common of mortals that Researchers are hard at work.  But by now we know that most standard genetic family abnormalities involve only 5-10% of cancers.  That means that no one genetic abnormality stands to justify any specific cancer in-toto. The case of BRCA1 and 2 in Breast cancer.
Breast cancer survivor Women who participated in My talk in El Paso,TX were surprised to learn that 85% of women newly diagnosed with Breast cancer in the US were first in their family.  Everybody was assuming that breast cancer happens because of family predisposition.  This is clearly an underestimation of the heterogeneity of our genetic material.  Don't understand me wrong, there are clear cases of family predispositions, however, we have an approximate 25,000 genes, something and somewhere a significant event can happen anytime.  Also, one should know that there is primary and secondary amplification.  In some cases it is hard to determine which came first (Chicken and egg dilemma ).
Another compounding factor complicating our interpretation in rare cases, is the notion that the cause of cancer can be located in the promoter gene which all of a sudden becomes difficult to methylate or suppress, causing secondary amplification of a gene or of its regulators.
When one wants to look at the genes involved in ovarian cancers, it is good to focus on particular genes (HNF1B) as clearly publicized, but we can't ignore the story of BRCAs, and other family syndromes which harbor Ovarian cancer as a component of the syndrome.  Therapies that are being developed and being effective in Ovarian cancer (Anti MEK) are also pointing to relevant genes.   The story of lung cancer with its ever expanding list of DRIVER MUTATIONS and the advent of MULTIPLEX gene screening is just another proof of the danger of claiming to have discovered THE GENE for a specific cancer!

GENES OF OVARIAN CANCER (to follow)