For decades, doctors have observed a peculiar pattern: certain brain cancers consistently arise in specific regions of the brain. A team of researchers, led by oncologist Louise Cheng at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in Australia, may have found a clue to this mystery by studying fruit flies.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focused on a protein called Chinmo. Researchers genetically engineered fruit flies to induce tumor-like growths. They observed that tumors only persisted in brain regions where Chinmo was present.
When Chinmo was dialed down, tumor development stopped; when increased, tumor growth began. While humans do not have Chinmo, the findings suggest similar proteins could influence cancer susceptibility. The next step is to identify those human analogs and target them therapeutically.