Can a gene simultaneously protect against cancer and favor its growth? Researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre have discovered a gene with this double-edged property and suspect there may be many more that share it. In the words of Oscar Fernandez Capetillo, head of the group responsible for the study, this gene "can be both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in that it can either protect us against the appearance of tumors or promote tumor growth."
The study, appears this week in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, with Andrés J. López-Contreras and Paula Gutiérrez Martínez as first authors, focuses on the activity of Chk1, a gene known for its tumour suppressing effect. It is what Fernández-Capetillo calls "a genome guardian, a gene that keeps our genome free of mutations and, therefore, protects against the development of tumours."
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