Ovarian Cancer Oncogene Found in ‘Junk DNA’

(October 6, 2014) A research team based at the University of Pennsylvania mined junk DNA sequences to identify a non-protein-coding RNA whose expression is linked to ovarian cancer.  The study, which was published in Cancer Cell, was supported in part by an OCRF research grant to Lin Zhang, MD.

The researchers built a DNA copy number profile for nearly 14,000 long noncoding RNAs, or lncRNAs across 12 cancer types, including ovarian and breast cancers that include the two major BRCA-related cancers. They found that the number of copies of lncRNA genes on a chromosome consistently changes in the 12 different cancer types. Also, lncRNA genes are widely expressed in cancer cells.

Read a story about this research here, and click here to read the article.