Study starts to tease out low-frequency cancer-causing mutations

LONDON – The discovery of a gene that is mutated at a very low frequency in a range of cancers could lead to new therapeutic strategies to help treat many different cancers. Loss of function of the gene, which is called CUX1, appears to switch on a cell signaling pathway that promotes the growth of tumor cells. Although the percentage of patients with tumors that have CUX1 mutations is low, at about 1 percent, the numbers of patients that could be helped by therapies that aim to compensate for loss of CUX1 function could be high.