Fanconi cancer and anemia
Fanconi anemia may help expand understanding of cancer
Alexander Shuster, BNB, based on ScienceDaily: Rare Genetic Disease Offers Insight Into Common CancersFanconi anemia is a rare genetic disease, often inherited autosomal recessive, which affects an average of 1 child out of 350 thousand newborns.
With this disease, the function of DNA damage repair is lost. The absence of this function significantly increases the risk of developing various cancers, especially leukemia and head and neck cancer.
With Fanconi anemia, it is impossible to use a whole class of anti-cancer drugs. We are talking about such drugs as mitomycin C. It promotes the crosslinking of DNA strands. Healthy cells can resist such crosslinking. Cancer cells are not. That's why they die. Unfortunately, the function of DNA damage repair is impaired in patients suffering from Fanconi anemia. Therefore, the treatment of such patients with drugs like mitomycin C can have the worst consequences.
Specialists from the Cancer Research Center of the University of Colorado, with the support of the Fanconi Anemia Research Foundation, conducted a study that was devoted to evaluating the effectiveness of a new anti-cancer agent among patients suffering from Fanconi anemia. We are talking about resveratrol (the model of its molecule is shown in the figure from the website worldofmolecules.com ). Currently, experts are preparing the results for presentation at the 24th annual Scientific Symposium of the Fanconi Anemia Research Foundation, which will be held on September 27-30 in Denver.
It should be noted that the results obtained may have a wider practical application than just solving problems arising from Fanconi anemia.
"One of the genes that are turned off in Fanconi anemia is BRCA2. Turning off BRCA2 is associated with the development of many types of breast cancer. It has not yet been clarified why patients with Fanconi anemia do not develop breast cancer. With the above disease, the BRCA2 gene ceases to function in all cells of the body. This disease is very rare, but it allows you to collect some information about cancers that are not so rare," says Robert Sclafani, an employee of the Cancer Research Center at the University of Colorado, professor of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Robert Sclafani and his colleagues have demonstrated the effectiveness of resveratrol in the treatment of head and neck cancer. In the same study, scientists evaluated the effectiveness of resveratrol as an antitumor agent using cells affected by Fanconi disease. Experts tried to answer the question whether resveratrol can prevent cancer by eliminating cancer cells of patients suffering from Fanconi anemia.
"It turns out that the cells affected by Fanconi disease do not respond to resveratrol in the same way as they respond to drugs like mitomycin C," says Robert Sclafani. He hopes that other mutations found in the cells of neck and head cancer tumors affected by Fanconi anemia, but not in normal cells with Fanconi disease, will make the above cancer cells sensitive to resveratrol by such a mechanism that normal cells with Fanconi anemia would not be sensitive to resveratrol. According to Robert Sclafani, Fanconi anemia may be the key to important information about various types of cancer.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru07.09.2012