all David E. Fisher stories

New insight into skin-tanning process suggests novel way of preventing skin cancer

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:28:08 -0400

Findings from a study led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital Boston have rewritten science's understanding of the process of skin tanning - an insight that has enabled them to develop a promising way of protecting fair- skinned people from skin cancer caused by exposure to sunlight.

Scientists identify normal gene driving the growth and survival of melanoma cells

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:21:27 -0400

Dana-Farber's Levi Garraway, M.D., Ph.D., and William Sellers, M.D., the paper's first and senior authors, and their colleagues reported their findings in the July 7, 2005 issue of the journal Nature.

The researchers used single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array technology, which focuses on the building blocks of individual genes, to identify regions of chromosomes where genes were either left out or multiplied over and over - mistakes that are often associated with cancer.

When they checked the treatment outcomes of the patients from whom they took tumor samples, researchers found poorer five- year survival rates among patients whose metasases contained the overcopied or "amplified" MITF gene.

Abnormal amplification of the MITF gene was found to be associated with other genetic changes as well. They included mutations in a gene, BRAF, previously found in melanoma cells, and silencing of p16, a "tumor-suppressor" gene that normally keeps cells from dividing too rapidly and causing cancer.

Aside from its clinical potential, the scientists say the finding advances the understanding of cancer: It highlights that while MITF normally regulates the development of the skin's pigment- producing cells, too much MITF spurs these melanocytes to grow malignant.

Research in brief

50443248 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:23:17 -0400

Dramatic gains for American Indians

Identified for decades as the poorest group in the United States, American Indians living on reservations made substantial gains, both economically and socially, during the final decade of the 20th century. A new report released by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at the Kennedy School of Government compiles the data from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Censuses for 15 key socioeconomic indicators. The data on measures ranging from income and poverty to unemployment, education, and housing conditions indicate that although substantial gaps remain between America's Native population and the rest of U.S. society, rapid economic and social development is taking place among gaming and non-gaming tribes alike.

Researchers discover why we go gray

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:36:44 -0400

People turn gray, Harvard scientists found, when certain adult stem cells gradually die off. The stem cells provide a continuous supply of other, pigment-producing cells that give your hair its natural color. These same types of pigment cells, called melanocytes, can become cancerous in melanoma, the lethal form of skin cancer that killed about 8,000 people in the United States alone during the past year. "Preventing the graying of hair is not our goal," says David E. Fisher, a Harvard Medical School scientist who directs the Program in Melanoma at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. "Our goal is to prevent or treat melanoma. We would love to identify a signal that would make melanoma cells stop growing." Fisher and his team have done this, at least in a laboratory dish, they reported in the December 2004 issue of the science journal Cancer Cell. Working together for the past two years, the team uncovered a protein called CDK2, which the cancer cells cannot live without. Find a way to block the activity of CDK2 and melanoma cells should stop growing. That's the hope.