1. Cancer as a genetic disease
Chapter 20

2. 1. Cancer Outline What is cancer?
What is the process leading to cancer?
Common types of cancers.
Germ line and Somatic mutations & cancer.

3. TUMORS
Malignant
Tumors are cancer!
Benign

4. Cancer : Multi-step process
Normal
Many mutations
Multiple mutations
Gain of function
Loss of function

5. Cancer : Multi-step process
Initiation
Clonal expansion
Progression
Expansion

7. Mutations
Somatic Cell
Germ Line

8. Scientists have also defined characteristics of a cancer cell.

9. 2. Cancer Outline Characteristics of a cancer cell DNA and Cancer
Cancer Prevention and Early Detection

10. Some Characteristics of a Cancer Cell
Loss of contact inhibition
Loss of apoptosis
Tumor growth “in vivo”

11. Normal Fibroblasts
Transformed Fibroblasts

12. Apoptosis: programmed cell death

13. APOPTOSIS: programmed cell death
Example
Bone cells

14. DNA and Cancer 1. Tumor suppressor genes 2. Proto- Oncogenes
3. Genetic Instability

15. 1.
Loss of Heterozygosity

16. Tumor Suppressor Gene Mutations
Breast cancer (p53 gene)
Retinoblastoma (rb gene)

17. 2.

18. Cancer Karotype: Genomic Instability

19. Summary: some DNA links to cancer are
Tumor Suppressors
Proto- & Oncogenes
Genomic Instability

20. Prevention
and
Early Detection

21. Cancer
Prevention
and
Early Detection

23. Nobel Prize in 2002 for their discovery of apoptosis
Brenner
Horvitz
Sulston

24. Hypothesis of origin of oncogenes
Viruses recombine with proto-oncogenes
Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus