SEATTLE -- Researchers have located the general area of a gene believed to cause an inherited form of prostate cancer and which may be implicated in brain cancer.
Scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and the University of Washington have mapped the gene to a specific area of chromosome 1 but have not pinpointed the precise location.
It is the fourth mapping of a prostate cancer gene. The findings could lead to new treatments and diagnostic tests for inherited prostate cancer, which accounts for about 10 percent of all cases of the disease.
"It was a wonderful team effort," said Elaine Ostrander, a Hutchinson Center researcher who was senior author of the study appearing in this month's American Journal of Human Genetics.
Other major contributors to research were Leroy Hood, director of the University of Washington department of molecular biotechnology; Janet Stanford, of the Hutchinson Center; and Gail Jarvik, a UW geneticist.
Prostate cancer kills about 40,000 men in the United States each year, second only to lung cancer fatalities. About 185,000 new cases were diagnosed last year.
The research by the Seattle team was financed with about $2 million a year from a consortium headed by former Wall Street junk-bond king Michael Milken. Treated for the disease after a brief prison term for securities violations, Milken in 1995 put up $50 million for researchers in Seattle and several other research centers to mount a major effort to better understand the disease.
Ostrander said mapping of the gene was accomplished by focusing on 152 families that had a high incidence of prostate cancer. Other research has shown that some families with prostate cancer also have a high incidence of all types of brain cancers. So the team concentrated especially on 12 of the 152 families that had been plagued with both diseases.
"We had families [volunteering] from all over the world, including every state in the U.S. and all 10 provinces in Canada," said Ostrander.
Millions of people learned about the research effort about three years ago when Milken, Hood and retired Gen. Norman H. Schwarzkopf, who had the disease, appeared on "Larry King Live" on CNN to publicize the effort.
Thousands of families called the Hutchinson Center to see whether they qualified as volunteers. Detailed family histories helped to narrow down those who were asked to donate blood for the research.
Ostrander said the research was particularly gratifying because scientists at several other U.S. institutions contributed data from their independent prostate cancer studies.
"They were brought together by the National Cancer Institute," she said. "It's an extremely exciting finding. It demonstrates the power of forming collaborative groups, where you check your ego at the door."
Ostrander couldn't predict when the gene on chromosome 1 might be pinpointed. But she noted that genes for other diseases were located within one to four years, once their chromosome locations were found.
"We have a very good head start and a really good collaborative group," she said.
Once the gene is located, she said, it may help scientists better understand this particularly perplexing cancer: why some cancers progress very rapidly while others don't; why African-Americans have a higher incidence than people of other races; why some patients respond well to treatment and others don't.
Ostrander said the newly mapped gene probably accounts for about 15 percent of all inherited prostate cancer. While only about one in 10 prostate cancers is inherited, the genetic form of the disease probably accounts for 40 percent of cases in men younger than 55.
Three other prostate cancer genes have been mapped to chromosome locations by other research teams: one at the Johns Hopkins University, another by French scientists, and the third by a consortium of scientists from Johns Hopkins, the National Center for Human Genome Research, the Mayo Clinic and a scientific group in Finland and Sweden.
Pub Date: 3/10/99