A gene discovered six years ago is linked to pancreatic cancer

Medindia.com: A gene discovered by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine has been associated with two forms of pancreatic cancer, according to a study by an international group of researchers.

The gene, called palladin, was discovered six years ago by Dr. Carol Otey and her former student, Dr. Mana Parast, now a pathology fellow with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Otey has shown that palladin is involved in the formation of scar tissue on nerve cells in the brain or spinal cord, and it’s found in cells that are moving, including embryonic cells and cells at the edge of wounds.

“Now we find it implicated in pancreatic cancer,” said Otey, an associate professor of cell and molecular physiology at UNC and a member of the UNC Neuroscience Center.

A study reported in the Dec. 12 issue of PLOS-Medicine, led by scientists at the University of Washington and the University of Pittsburgh, found palladin over expressed in people with sporadic, or non-familial, pancreatic cancer. A mutation of the gene was over expressed in cells of people with familial pancreatic cancer, which makes up at least 10 percent of all pancreatic cancer cases. Otey is a co-author on the paper.

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