You’ve heard of fighting fire with fire, but fighting cancer
with cancer? A Mayo Clinic Study has found that A mutant gene
long thought to accelerate tumor growth in thyroid cancer
patients actually inhibits the spread of malignant cells,
showing promise for novel cancer therapies. The findings will be
presented by Mayo Clinic researcher Honey Reddi, Ph.D., at the
Endocrine Society meeting in Boston. Dr. Reddi’s discovery could
have widespread implications in cancer research and
endocrinology. It could help oncologists sharpen the diagnosis
of specific types of thyroid cancers, while leading
pharmaceutical researchers toward therapeutics derived from a
protein once thought to feed tumor growth. “It’s not an oncogene
like everyone thought it was,” Dr. Reddi says, referring to a
gene with the potential to cause cancer. “We all knew what
happened in the cell culture, but we said, ‘That’s not good
enough,’ so we asked, ‘What would it do in mice?’” Thyroid
cancer is the sixth most common cancer in the world, and 1