Gene Found Activated in 70% of Prostate Cancer Cases, George Washington University Medical Center Scienti...( DRS. PATRICIA BERG AND ARNOLD SCH...),Health

DRS. PATRICIA BERG AND ARNOLD SCHWARTZ LED TEAM, Article in Modern Pathology set for print publication January 2009

BERG HAD ALSO DISCOVERED SAME GENE'S ACTIVATION IN MAJORITY OF BREAST CANCER CASES

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A gene has been found activated in 70% of prostate cancer tumors, the same gene that has been discovered activated in a majority of breast cancer cases, report scientists at the George Washington University Medical Center led by Dr. Patricia Berg, who discovered and cloned the gene, and Dr. Arnold Schwartz. Berg is Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and directs a laboratory at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC, and Schwartz is Professor of Pathology and practicing clinician at GWUMC.

In the January, 2009 print issue of Modern Pathology, a journal of the Nature Publishing Group, the team of researchers led by Berg and Schwartz will report that "Significant BP1 immunoreactivity was identified in approximately 70% of prostatic adenocarcinomas, whether the analysis was performed on tissue sections (50 cases) or tissue microarray platforms (123 cases)." The findings compare to "less than 5%" BP1 activity in normal cells. The researchers conclude that "These findings suggest that BP1 is an important upstream factor in the carcinogenic pathway of prostate cancer and that the expression of BP1 may reflect or directly contribute to tumor progression and/or invasion."

In addition to Berg and Schwartz, the team of authors includes Drs. Yan-Gao Man, Department of Gynecologic and Breast Pathology, The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington DC; M Katayoon Rezaei, Department of Pathology, The George Washington University Medical Center, Washington DC; and Samuel J Simmens, Department of Biostatistics, The George Washington University Medical Center, Washington DC.

Berg had previously published and reported, and the authors cite in the current arti
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