Boston Blog

We kid you not: Zebrafish help researchers battle incurable cancer

After celebrating the Globe’s health coverage awards, we offer a couple of links to today’s paper. (Disclosure: Close family member works there.)

cover_nature zebrafishIn reference to the headline, Carolyn Johnson reports on two papers from Nature (Disclosure: As you might notice, I work there.) on genomic research from local labs. We appreciate the qualifications from both the scientist and the writer. (If you recall an earlier post, we scribes have been accused of overselling the potential of the Human Genome Project.)

Here’s what one doc had to say on the sequencing of multiple myeloma tumor genome.

There had been some speculation that maybe we’ve discovered all the cancer-causing genes and there’s nothing left,‘’ said Dr. Todd Golub, a core member at the Broad and senior author of the new research. “The ability to look broadly in this way is showing us that we haven’t discovered everything.’’

One the success of a new melanoma target in mice, Johnson writes

In mice that were engrafted with a human melanoma tumor, and then treated with the arthritis drug and another targeted compound that is already in late stage clinical trials for melanoma, the combination seemed to block tumor growth.

There is increasing emphasis on the need for combination drugs, since targeted drugs can have effects on cancer, but often the effects are only temporary.

On the op-ed pages, editors applaud the revival of Harvar’s planned science center complex.

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