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FROM THE WEB The Birmingham News - al.com, AL - Aug 3, 2008 Fans were quick to react to the death of John Mark Stallings, the son of former Alabama head football coach Gene Stallings who died Saturday in Paris, ... Regeneron Announces VelociGene(R) Agreement with Sanofi-Aventis WELT ONLINE, Germany - Sanofi-aventis will pay Regeneron a minimum of $4.3 million annually for five years for knock-out and transgenic models of gene function for target genes ...SNY - REGN Gene Test Leads To Targeted Cancer Treatment cbs4denver.com, CO - In the hour after the Stand Up To Cancer broadcast, CBS4 will sponsor a live Web video chat featuring cancer doctors from Colorado. ... The Associated Press TV's loss is Web's gain as Roger Ebert blogs The Associated Press - Jul 30, 2008 Ebert last week announced he was leaving the long-televised show he began with Gene Siskel ? by its earliest incarnation ? in 1975. The 66-year-old Pulitzer ... More than economy drives sale Chicago Tribune, United States - Aug 4, 2008 By Ann Meyer | Special to the Chicago Tribune Gene Schaefer Flynn knows it's not the best time to sell a retail business. She also knows most experts ... ABC News Firebombs show new tactics of animal activists San Francisco Chronicle,  USA - The incidents prompted Assemblyman Gene Mullin, D-South San Francisco, to introduce a bill in February that would allow UC officials to withhold names of ... Calif. animal scientists attacked Scientist Firebombs target UC-Santa Cruz scientists who use animals in research San Jose Mercury News Researcher targeted in flyer speaks out San Jose Mercury News all 569 news articles » An iPhone Nano Before Christmas? InformationWeek, NY - Not so fast, says a post on Fortune, which points to analysis by Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster and the fact that the Daily Mail is more known for celebrity ... Crawling the Web: H5N1 and 1918 flu virus Scientist Live, UK - A novel Bayesian analysis of the possible "selection histories" of each gene indicated that most PSGs have switched multiple times between positive ... Convio Announces Record Revenues of $14.7 Million TMCnet - "We are pleased with our growth, record revenues, cash flow and profitability during a challenging economic period," said Gene Austin, chief executive ... Mr. Obama, Welcome to the NFL! Yahoo! News - Sunday, Gene Robinson of The Washington Post accused McCain of "running a desperate, ugly campaign." The Britney-Paris ad calling Obama "the biggest ...

New Cancer Gene Raises Risk by a Quarter

Nearly one in 10 people have a gene mutation that can raise their risk of cancer by a quarter or more, U.S. researchers reported.

The gene appears to be the most common cancer-linked gene identified so far and raises the risk of breast and ovarian cancer by 50 percent, and the risk of colon cancer by 38 percent, the researchers said.

"The gene was prevalent in around 15 percent to 16 percent of the cancer patients and it was found in around 10 percent of the general population," said Dr. Virginia Kaklamani, an oncologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago who led the study.

"It is very common." People with two copies of the mutated gene have double this risk, the researchers said. By contrast, Kaklamani said in a telephone interview, BRCA1 and BRCA2, which predispose to breast cancer, are found in 1 in 500 people.

The gene controls a protein called transforming growth factor beta receptor 1-6A, or TGFBR1-6A for short. The protein appears to be involved in stopping cells from the out-of-control proliferation that characterizes cancer. "This protein has a weird function. In normal cells it inhibits their growth. However, once a cell becomes cancerous it looks like it makes it even more malignant -- it accelerates their growth," Kaklamani said. Dr. Boris Pasche, director of Northwestern`s Cancer Genetics Program, first identified the gene in 1998. Several companies are working on cancer drugs that affect TGF, an associated protein, and this region is of interest to some cancer researchers.

The team analyzed seven published studies and pooled those results to conclude that the TGFRB1-6A gene may be to blame for 7 percent of all breast cancers, nearly 11 percent of all ovarian cancers and 5.5 percent of all colon cancers. It is less commonly involved in a range of other cancers. Cancer is caused by altered genes -- sometimes inherited, sometimes changed by environmental factors such as smoking, hormones or overeating. "Most cases of breast, ovarian and colon cancers are caused by damage to the genes that builds up over a lifetime, but some people are born with a high risk of the disease," Pasche said in a statement. "When inherited, the TGFRB1-6A gene makes people susceptible to having certain cells grow and divide uncontrollably, which may contribute to cancer development." Most people have a slightly longer version of the gene, Kaklamani said. The shortened mutation seems to cause production of a faulty protein, she said.

She said it is too soon to start testing people for the mutation but the findings could eventually be used to screen people for cancer risk and perhaps to develop better therapies. "In the near future, it will be commonplace for people to know what genes make them more susceptible to cancer, and we`ll have many more options for preventing those cancers," Pasche predicted. Kaklamani said her team is now looking to see how aggressive the cancers linked to TGFRB1-6A are, and whether mutations can not only be inherited but caused by the environment or behavior.