A gene involved in cell division also helps fuel a deadly childhood cancer called neuroblastoma and could offer a new way to develop drugs to treat the disease, German researchers said today, according to Reuters. The study published in the journal Cancer Cell found that a protein produced by the AURKA gene feeds a different gene called MYCN, which scientists know plays a key role in fuelling tumour growth in children with neuroblastoma, the researchers said. "The MYCN gene is one that no pharmaceutical company have been able to target," Martin Eilers, a researcher at Wurzburg University in Germany, who led the study, said in a telephone interview. "Our finding offers hope we can make new (drugs) to attack this cancer." Neuroblastoma accounts for 15 percent of childhood cancer deaths, with just a 40 percent survival rate, even though it only causes about seven percent of all paediatric cancers.
