Tag : Chromosomes

Connecticut: According to a recent Yale study, cancer cells with additional chromosomes rely on those chromosomes for tumour formation, and removing them stops the cells from growing tumours. The results, according to the researchers, point to the possibility of a novel cancer treatment strategy that specifically targets additional chromosomes. The study was published in the journal Science. Human cells typically have 23 pairs of chromosomes; extra chromosomes are an anomaly known as aneuploidy. "If you look at normal skin or normal lung tissue, for example, 99.9% of the cells will have the right number of chromosomes," said Jason Sheltzer, assistant professor of surgery at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study, adding, "But we've known for over 100 years that nearly all cancers are aneuploid." However, it was unclear what role extra chromosomes played in cancer for instance, whether they cause cancer or are caused by it. "For a long time, we could observe aneuploidy but not manipulate it. We just didn't have the right tools," said Sheltzer, who is also a researcher at Yale Cancer Center, adding, "But in this study, we used the gene-engineering technique CRISPR to develop a new approach to eliminate entire chromosomes from cancer cells, which is an important technical advance. Being able to manipulate aneuploid chromosomes in this way will lead to a greater understanding of how they function." The study was co-led by former lab members Vishruth Girish, now an M.D.-Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Asad Lakhani, now a postdoctoral researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Using their newly developed approach which they dubbed Restoring Disomy in Aneuploid cells using CRISPR Targeting, or ReDACT t ...