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CONTACT: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255 or (850) 694-3735
doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu
By Doug Carlson
November 2008
MED SCHOOL DISCOVERY COULD LEAD TO BETTER CANCER DIAGNOSIS, DRUGS
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A Florida State University College of Medicine
research team led by Yanchang Wang has discovered an important new
layer of regulation in the cell division cycle, which could lead to
a greater understanding of the way cancer begins.
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Yanchang Wang Ph.D.
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Wang, an assistant professor of biomedical sciences at the College
of Medicine, said the findings will lead to an improved ability to
diagnose cancer and could lead to the design of new drugs that kill
cancer cells by inhibiting cell reproduction. His paper on the
discovery has been published in the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.
“The correct timing of chromosome segregation during cell division
is necessary to ensure normal, healthy growth,” Wang said. “Now we
have discovered a previously undetected layer of regulation in how
the chromosomes separate, which helps to ensure the correct timing
and decreases the potential for the formation of cancerous growth.”
The cell division cycle is a collection of tightly regulated events
that lead to cell duplication. The most important events are the
doubling of the hereditary information encoded within a set of
chromosomes, and the division of that duplicated information into
two daughter cells that are genetically identical to each other and
the mother cell.
The correct order of cell-cycle events is essential for successful
cell division. Wang’s article addresses the role of a particular
protein enzyme, Cdc14, in ensuring that cell division events occur
in exactly the right order.
Defects in the regulation of the order of events can lead to cell
death or the alteration of genetic information, which contributes to
the formation of cancerous cells.
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