Word: burkitt
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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What made anyone think fiber could prevent colon cancer in the first place? It all started 30 years ago, when a British medical missionary named Denis Burkitt suggested that the reason colon cancer is rare in Africa is that Africans consume much more fiber than North Americans and Europeans. Perhaps, later researchers argued, the extra fiber sweeps the bowel clean of potential carcinogens or somehow alters the intestinal chemistry to retard tumor growth. A few small studies supported the link, while others didn...
Leder says that studies done may years ago on concer known as Burkitt's lymphoma paved the way for his transgenic research...
...reason we arrived at Burkitt's lymphoma was that the research was directed at the genetic basis for formation of antibodies," says Leder...
When the DNA locus of the encoding of these antibody producers was identified, he says, it was found that this locus was always involved in the same region as Burkitt's lymphoma. The insertion of the lymphoma abnormality, a gene known as c-myc, was responsible for the rise of the tumor...
This led to the conclusion that the gene suspected as causal in Burkitt's lymphoma was necessary but not sufficient for cancer, Leder says. It was also concluded that the gene could cause cancer in other mammals, and in regions of the body other than the blood...