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Does this sound like good news? ********** Researchers report they have isolated four anti-death genes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright ) 1996 Nando.net Copyright ) 1996 Scripps Howard TORONTO (Jan 25, 1996 01:27 a.m. EST) -- It may not quite be a fountain of youth, but Canadian and Japanese researchers are reporting Thursday that they have isolated four genes that keep cells in the body from dying. While the new findings are still very much on the level of basic research, researchers at the University of Ottawa hope that their work will open up new treatments for illnesses as different -- and devastating -- as Alzheimer's, AIDS and cancer. In research published in the British journal Nature, the Ottawa group and their Japanese collaborators describe how the four genes significantly reduced cell death in ovarian, skin and cervical cells. The scientists also believe the genes' anti-death proteins work on cells generally distributed throughout the body. Normal cell death, which is known scientifically as apoptosis, occurs millions of times every day and is necessary if the body is to have room for the new cells it just as regularly creates. A breakdown in the orderly procession of cell birth and death has been linked to a number of diseases. In particular, the change from HIV-infected to full-blown AIDS is often heralded by a precipitous die-off of certain white blood cells. On the other hand, the "immortality" of cancer cells has been linked to a breakdown in cell death chemistry. Last year the Ottawa group, headed by molecular geneticists Alex MacKenzie, and Robert Korneluk, found one of the two genes whose mutated form produces spinal muscular atrophy, a degenerative muscle disease. Thursday's result shows that a non-mutated form of the muscular atrophy gene, as well as three related genes, prevent cell death. While several dozen genes that trigger apoptosis have been reported, the new finding raises the number which inhibit it to 10 from six. The clinical potential of the work, which has been funded by a variety of private and public sources, is in so-called gene therapy. In this still-experimental treatment, non-mutated copies of the gene are put into the body and produce normal proteins. "If gene therapy gets up and running, and that is an open question at the moment, these are the kind of genes we would use on SMA, Lou Gehrig's disease, potentially Alzheimer's, post-stroke cases, and AIDS," said MacKenzie, about the potential of Thursday's report. However, he stressed treatment based on turning cell death on or off has its own perils. "The large caveat is when put them in, you had better be damn sure you are putting in tissues you want, and not initiating cancers in tissues you haven't targeted," he said. (From the Toronto Globe and Mail, distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright ) 1996 Nando.net Janet Paterson, 48, 7, [log in to unmask] Bermuda