Cancer News, Treatment and Research

Chromosomal deletions in DNA often involve just one of two gene copies inherited from either parent. But scientists haven’t known how a deletion in one gene from one parent, called a “hemizygous” deletion, can contribute to cancer. A research team led by Harvard Medical School scientists has now provided an answer. The most common hemizygous deletions in cancer, their research shows, involve a variety of tumor suppressing genes called STOP genes (suppressors of tumorigenesis and proliferation) that scatter randomly throughout the genome, but that sometimes cluster in the same place on a chromosome. And these clusters tend to be deleted as a group.