Seven new genetic risk factors — DNA sequences carried by some people but not others — that predict risk for prostate cancer have been identified. Researchers at Harvard and University of Southern California, who found these risk factors clustered in a single region of the human genome on chromosome 8, say they are powerfully predictive of a man’s probability of developing prostate cancer.

“The study has identified combinations of genetic variants that predict more than a fivefold range of risk for prostate cancer,” says senior author David Reich, assistant professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. “Both high- and low-risk combinations of variants are common in human populations.”

“The identification of these genetic variants is an important step in helping us understand the higher risk for prostate cancer in African Americans compared with other U.S. populations and why some men develop prostate cancer and others do not,” says lead author Christopher Haiman, assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

More in our full coverage report.

p53, commonly called the tumor suppressor gene, has attracted several fancy names, some worthy of Hollywood. “Guardian of the genome” (Lane, 1992), “Death star” (Vousden, 2000), “Good and bad cop” (Sharpless and DePinho, 2002), “An acrobat in tumorigenesis” (Moll and Schramm, 1998), are a few of the names that have been attributed to the p53 gene, according to the p53 website. Quite often p53 is called a master switch.

Now, scientists at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden have identified a great many more proteins that are under the control of p53 than were previously known. And they are proposing a new, musical metaphor.
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A study of almost 40 thousand Israeli men has found that men who have fathered sons are at lower risk for prostate cancer than men who have daughters but no sons. The researchers suggest that this shows the Y chromosome is involved in prostate cancer.
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