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The difference between a great recipe and one that's full of
mistakes is the difference between a delicious cake and a
complete kitchen disaster.
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In the case of your DNA, the recipe that makes you you, it
could be the difference between life and death.
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The DNA code is made up of pairs of four letters, or base
pairs, A and T, and C and G. But if things go missing, get
swapped, or the DNA gets damaged, this leads to
mistakes in the recipe of life, and
it can lead to cancer.
Your DNA is being damaged all the time, mostly by the
hurly-burly of processes of life within our cells
themselves, but also by things outside the body, by the
chemicals in tobacco smoke, or UV radiation from the sun.
But luckily, nature has equipped us with tiny
molecular tool kits that recognise and repair the
damage, and one of them is BRCA2.
Found on Chromosome 13, the BRCA2 gene encodes a large
protein that's responsible for repairing
damage within ourselves.
But if BRCA2 is faulty or missing, our cells can't
detect and repair damage properly.
It builds up, and it can lead to cancer.
Inherited faults in BRCA2 are responsible for cases of
breast, ovarian, prostate, and pancreatic
cancer that run in families.
But rather than being a strength for cancer, having a
fault in the BRCA2 gene may actually be a weakness, and
it's one that scientists are trying to exploit.
Meet my friend Jim.
Now it turns out your cells have two ways of repairing
damage to their DNA.
One of them is with BRCA2 and a related
protein called BRCA1.
And the other is with a molecule called PARP.
Yes, PARP.
No sniggering.
If cells have a faulty BRCA2, they're not so good at
repairing damage to their DNA.
But they can still struggle by, because they have PARP.
It's like having their belt cut.
But this damage can build up, and it can lead to cancer.
Scientists think that treating these cancer cells with drugs
that block PARP will mean that they can't repair their damage
at all and they'll die.
It's like cutting the braces as well.
Thanks.
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Drugs that block PARP, called PARP inhibitors, are already
showing promise in clinical trials for people with cancer
with BRCA gene faults.
And one day, they may even be useful for treating cancer in
the general population, too.
But there's a long way to go, and brilliant scientists
around the world are busy cooking up new approaches for
treating cancer like this.
But unlike my efforts in the kitchen, developing new
therapies for cancer isn't a piece of cake.
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