Question: What DNA has worked best to defeat cancer???

Arthur Dyer answered on 10 Nov 2014:

Hi there ScienceKid (great profile name 😛 )

There’s a couple of genes that are really important for cancer.

Cancer happens when someone gets a mutation in a number of their genes and if we look at loads and loads of people’s cancers and look at their DNA we can find out what mutations they have in common. We can also look at really fast growing cancers and compare them to really slow growing cancers and find out what the difference in DNA is.

From this work a couple of really important DNA mutations have been discovered.

One is called P53.

P53 is known as the guardian of the cell because of it’s job. It turns out that it is nearly impossible for a cancer to grow unless it has mutated the P53 gene and so it is a really really important gene.

When cells grow they go through a few stages, they grow in size first then they make everything they need to split in two (including two copies of their DNA) then they grow a little more and finally they split. In between each of these steps is a checkpoint so the cell can make sure it is ready to do the next stage and that it should be making a new cell and these check points are controlled by P53. If P53 is mutated or damaged then cells can grow really quickly and not stop growing and that’s basically cancer so targeting P53 is an important treatment for cancer and it has only recently been tried in humans with really great results so it might become a real cure for cancer in the next 10-20 years.