UK group identifies cancer development mechanism

A Cancer Research UK-funded project has identified a faulty gene which can lead to kidney cancer. The work, which was also supported by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust, examined cell samples from sufferers of the rare condition von Hippel-Lindau syndrome. The disease, which arises due to a fault in the VHL gene, elevates the risk of benign and malignant kidney tumors.

The research group identified the mechanism by which the faulty gene causes the illness when it discovered that the harvested cells lacked a protein called e-cadherin, which plays a role in helping cells to adhere and form tissues. The lack of this protein hinders communication between cells which, as a result, develop the ability to invade and spread in a similar way to cancerous cells,

Lead study investigator Patrick Maxwell said that the ability to study pre-cancerous kidney cells would assist in the development of methods to detect the occurrence of cancer, although he added that several other factors were likely to be involved in the mechanism.