Protein helps trigger leukaemia—study

Press, 25 July 1984, Page 17

Protein helps trigger leukaemia—study

NZPA-AP Los Angeles A newly discovered protein produced by a suspected cancer-causing gene apparently helps trigger one type of leukaemia, according to a study. The findings were praised by cancer experts as “very important” and a “breakthrough” in understanding how cancer may be spurred by genes, the basic units of heredity. “Diseases may go down a certain path,” said Owen Witte, who headed the research team. “What we’ve done is to pull together certain parts of a pathway so that we understand better the path that leads to one form of human leukemia.”

The study by the microbiologists, Dr Witte, James Konopka and Susan Watanabe was published in the July issue of the journal "Cell.” Ji, • Dr Witte saiff the research demonstrated how

a genetic change may cause a common type of human adult leukaemia called Chronic Myelogenous Leukaemia or C.M.L. It is a cancer of the bone-marrow cells, which normally produce different kinds of blood cells.

Genes control the heriditary characteristics of all living things and direct the growth and development of normal body cells and tissues. But scientists have identified 20 to 30 genes, called oncogenes, which they believe sometimes undergo changes to cause cells to become cancerous.

For the first time, the study demonstrated how a suspected oncogene, called A.8.L., produces a previously undiscovered protein. The study also showed that the new protein functions abnormally. Such abnormal activity already has been shown to cause a wide variety of cancers in animals, scfßt is believed to cause the abnor-

mal cell growth seen in human C.M.L. patients. The study was a very important step forward, said a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist, David Baltimore, Dr Witte’s former employer and winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for research that set the stage for the discovery of oncogenes. Robert Weinberg, another leading researcher in can-cer-causing genes, said Dr Witte’s study was one of six break-throughs over the last few years that had clarified how cancer-causing genes might work. “We’ve begun to understand a number, of specific, molecular changes that happen inside cells when they Become converted from normal cells into tumour cells,” Dr Weinberg said. “... what Witte’s group has done is to identify the A.B.L. oncogene as a potentially important player in causing certain kinds of human leukaemia."