Teams implicate new gene in prostate cancer
By John Travis
This summer, prostate cancer forced New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani to drop out of a heated race for the U.S. Senate. That political bombshell brought new attention to a disease that ranks as the most common cancer among U.S. men and kills more than 30,000 of them annually.
Despite intensive study of the cancer, in which cells of the walnut-shaped prostate gland proliferate wildly, researchers have had little success identifying genes that underlie the disease. This week, however, Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City announced that its scientists have found a mutated gene in a few families whose men are prone to prostate cancer.