{"id":16714,"date":"2021-03-08T21:22:07","date_gmt":"2021-03-08T08:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/?p=16714"},"modified":"2021-03-08T21:22:52","modified_gmt":"2021-03-08T08:22:52","slug":"the-epic-battle-with-cancers-death-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/?p=16714","title":{"rendered":"The epic battle with cancer’s ‘Death Star’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The epic battle with cancer’s ‘Death Star’<\/h1>\n

[\/vc_custom_heading][vc_column_text]This article was originally posted by The Guardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n

In the early 1980s, Channing Der was just beginning his career as a scientist at Harvard Medical School when he happened upon a discovery that would change the course of cancer research. At the time, the holy grail of cancer biology was discovering so-called oncogenes \u2013 genetic switches that can turn a normal cell into a cancer cell \u2013 in the genomes of tumours. But while teams of scientists had thrown everything at it for the best part of a decade, their efforts had proved fruitless. One by one, they were beginning to accept that it might be a dead end.<\/p>\n

Der found himself assigned to test 20 different genes that had been identified as possible oncogene candidates. His question was simple: did any of them actually exist in tumours in a form that was different from normal cells?<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople thought it wasn\u2019t going to work,\u201d he remembers. \u201cI began, and certainly for five months, the chances of success seemed to be pretty slim. I was ready to just wrap this up, and move on to something else that might be more productive, when I made the discovery which changed the course of my professional career.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first 18 of the genes Der tested turned out to be normal. But the final two, members of a gene family called RAS, were found to be uniquely mutated in cancer cells. \u201cBeing fairly new to the field at that point, I didn\u2019t fully understand the ramifications of what this meant,\u201d he laughs. \u201cI was working in the lab of a professor named Geoffrey Cooper, and when I showed him the results, he paused for what seemed like minutes. So I asked if he was OK, and he replied: \u2018This could be one of the most significant discoveries in cancer biology in decades.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To continue reading this article on The Guardian.com<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forty years after the mutant genes that cause the deadliest cancers were discovered, drugs that target them could be approved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-research"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Death-Star-8-3-21.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16716,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16714\/revisions\/16716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}