Breast Cancer
Diagnosis and Treatment Options
Stopping a deadly killer
Here’s a chilling thought: it is estimated that 1 in 8 women will be affected by breast cancer at some point during their adult life. It is the leading cause of cancer deaths among women. The global statistics are alarming, 7 million new cases are diagnosed every year, with nearly 1½ million women dying from the disease.
The link between mutations in genes and Breast cancer has been well documented.
The guilty gene
The best characterised gene in Breast cancer research is BRCA1. In normal cells this gene repairs mistakes in DNA. But when mutations arise in BRCA1, it loses its function. This is thought to trigger tumour formation.
A recent publication reported the use of a chemical inhibitor to selectively target BRCA1-deficient cells. DZNep (3-deazaneplanocin A) was used to inhibit the polycomb gene EZH2, which is known to be over-expressed in breast tumours. The success of the inhibitor indicates that EZH2 is a druggable target.
A design for hope
To measure expression levels of EZH2 in BRCA1-deficient human breast tumours and cell lines, a suitable probe has to be designed that is specific for the EZH2 gene.
SynaProbe is tailor-made to create such a probe. This on-line application designs and selects suitable oligomer probes for a gene of interest, in this case, EZH2. It is complemented by SynaHybridise, which verifies probe sequence specificity, to ensure that the risk of false positives is reduced as much as possible.
Both these applications can also be used for designing probes to detect and quantify other genes that are involved in Breast cancer such as Bmi-1, Ink4A and Ink4B.
To design a suitable probe, please follow the steps below:
Step 1 of 3
Click here, to submit your query.
Step 2 of 3
On the results page, click on to verify probe sequence specificity.
Step 3 of 3
The result demonstrates that the selected probe is specific, with only one possible binding site in the genome.
Read the full paper here: Breast Cancer Research 2009.
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