{"id":27239,"date":"2025-07-27T22:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T22:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/27239\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T22:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T22:23:08","slug":"research-reveals-genetic-weak-spot-in-hard-to-treat-cancers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/27239\/","title":{"rendered":"Research reveals genetic weak spot in hard-to-treat cancers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Splicing is how cells turn long strands of RNA into shorter pieces called messenger RNA, which provide the template for the production of proteins.<\/p>\n

While major splicing carries out 99.5% of this work, minor splicing is an indispensable process for the remaining 0.05% of genes, affecting about 700 of the 20,000 genes in the human genome.<\/p>\n

The new research reveals that blocking minor splicing causes the accumulation of DNA damage in cancer cells and activates a key tumour suppressor pathway that leads to cell death. Remarkably, healthy cells are largely unaffected.<\/p>\n

Although it affects only a small sub-set of genes, minor splicing is crucial for the correct expression of genes that drive cell growth and division \u2013 making it a potential Achilles\u2019 heel for cancer cells.<\/p>\n

Importantly, many of these genes are commonly hijacked by cancers driven by KRAS mutations, which are among the most frequent genetic changes found in solid tumours.<\/p>\n

WEHI laboratory head Professor Joan Heath<\/a> said scientists have long known that KRAS is central to many aggressive cancers but have struggled to turn that knowledge into broadly effective treatments.<\/p>\n

\u201cKRAS mutations come in a variety of flavours, making them extremely hard to treat, so even with decades of scientific effort there has been only limited progress so far,\u201d Prof Heath said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut our approach is different. Instead of trying to target specific mutations that may only apply to a subset of patients, we\u2019re disrupting a fundamental process that these fast-growing cancers rely on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis research offers a new way to tackle a problem that\u2019s long resisted conventional approaches, with the potential to help a much wider group of patients.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Splicing is how cells turn long strands of RNA into shorter pieces called messenger RNA, which provide the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[916,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-27239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-genetics","tag-genetics","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}