Germline, not Tumor, SNPs for Prediction (and possibly treatment) of Breast, Colon, Lung, Ovarian, Pancreatic, and Prostatic Cancer in Caucasians

5^th World Congress on Cancer Therapy

September 28-30, 2015 Atlanta, USA

David W Moskowitz

GenoMed, Inc., USA

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Cancer Sci Ther

Abstract :

The oncoogy community, encouraged by the success of Gleevec�® in CML, is focusing its attention exclusively on the tumor. The patientâ��s germline DNA has been ignored. But we have found hundreds if not thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the germline (somatic) DNA of patients with the six cancers mentioned above. Each patient has about a third of the SNPs shared by patients with the same pathological diagnosis. There is considerable overlap between cancers, but very few genes are involved in all six cancers. Germline SNPs are ideal for predictive diagnosis. The large number of germline SNPs shared by patients with the same cancer suggest that a major cellular program is involved. Differentiaiton is the most likely one. It appears that a tissue stem cell is stimulated to proliferate by tissue atrophy, clealry an age-dependent process (which would explain the striking age dependence of most cancers). Unlike embryonic differentiation, when there is an elegant grid of tissue transcription factors guiding the fate of proliferating cells, the proliferating tissue stem cell in the adult is largely on its own. Patients who develop one of the above six cancers, and perhaps most kinds of cancer, appear to have an imbalance favoring oncogenes over tumor suppressors. As described for 150 years, cancer is a failure of differentiation. The genes that weâ��ve uncovered may therefore guide differentiation therapy, especially for late-stage disease. This approach has the added advantage, besides possibly working, of being much less toxic than current cytotoxic therapy.

Biography :

Email: dwmoskowitz@genomed.com