Geneticists Make Progress Against Ovarian Cancer

MONDAY, Aug. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Canadian researchers say they've created a new model to identify ovarian cancer genes, a big step toward improving treatment for the disease.

"Our findings now provide tangible targets for effective drug development. Up top now, there has been little in the way of treatment options for this disease, which is one of the most lethal of cancers," Dr. Patricia Tonin, a cancer geneticist at McGill University Health Center in Montreal, said in a prepared statement.

"This model not only allows us to identify the specific human chromosome 3 genes responsible for affecting tumor growth, but also has great potential to pinpoint genes in the entire human genome that would be most affected by this process," added Tonin, who is also an associate professor of medicine and human genetics at McGill.

The research was published in the current issue of Oncogene.

"Ovarian cancer studies have shown the alteration of hundreds of genes. The challenge is to identify those genes that affect ovarian cancer from those which don't. Our model can be used to do just that, so that we can focus our attention on those genes most likely to affect tumor growth," Tonin said.