Nature, nurture and prostate cancer
Why do we get cancer? It can be easy to figure out. Mutations in certain genes can almost guarantee cancer development in any environment, and exposure to strong mutagens cause high cancer rates regardless of genetic background. But those cases are rare. Most cancers result unpredictably from a collision of genes and environment, making them both hard to prevent and hard to treat. To get a better handle on these interactions, researchers led by Peter Nelson at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center used JAX® Mice to examine how genes implicated in prostate cancer differed among five different common mouse strains. What they found, published in the June 18, 2007, issue of Genome Biology, was large strain-specific differences in prostate gene expression during both cancer development and progression. Their findings emphasized the notion that the genetic differences likely play an important role in not only the initiation of cancer at the cellular level but also the cascade of events that lead to actual disease. Investigators are just starting to unravel the cancer susceptibilities and protections provided by our individual genetics, but the field promises to yield better and more specific cancer therapies in the future.
