Researchers discover genes that suppress lymphoma in mice

RNA is making a comeback. For years researchers all-but-ignored RNA, assuming much of it was junk or served such simple purpose that it wasn't worth researching. That's all changing.

Researchers from New York's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory suppressed the activity of hundreds of candidate tumor suppressing genes in mice using a technology called RNA interference. What they found was at least 10 genes that, once switched off, caused a rapid acceleration of the development of lymphomas in the mice. Furthermore, there seemed to be some specificity related t o these genes in their context, meaning that tumor suppressing genes for lymphoma don't suppress tumors in other cancers.

What it all may lead to is better immunotherapy drugs but also the possibility that some such drugs might help suppress one gene's ability to promote, say, a lung tumor, but wind up encouraging that same gene to promote the development of, say, lymphoma.

Typical. But did you expect anything less from cancer? Me neither.

The researchers published their findings in the journal Cancer Cell.