A newly-discovered astonishing surprise of life: the extra chromosome carried by people with Down's syndrome carries a gene that causes cancer tumors to be starved of the blood they need to survive.
"Most people don't appreciate the fact that these individuals with Downs potentially hold a secret that might lead to quite substantial and revolutionary new treatments for cancer," said Dr. David Sweetser, who treats patients and researches cancer at MassGeneral Hospital for Children but was not involved in the Downs project. "The obvious hope is that this is going to give us information to help develop a tool that we could use to treat a whole variety of solid tumors."
A tale of scientific serendipity