Posts Tagged ‘predisposition’
Hereditary predisposition to cancer
In hereditary cancer, every body cell (somatic + germline) in the person’s body has a mutation in some highly penetrant gene (e.g. BRCA1 or 2). Because we inherit two copies of genes (or alleles) on separate chromosomes from our parents, the second copy usually is normal. But people who have inherited a constitutional germline mutation in tumor suppressor genes are one step closer to cancer than those who haven’t, because they generally follow the Knudson ‘two-hit hypothesis” and need inactivation of a second gene copy for cancer to develop. So, these persons are “one step closer to cancer” and the term hereditary cancer is mostly applied when we know the responsible gene, which Read the rest of this entry »
Hereditary predisposition to cancer
The demonstration that cancer is essentially a genetic disease is one of the most recent advances in oncology.
Looking at the light microscope and to me a certain type of normal cells, eg fibroblasts, and Read the rest of this entry »