Bruce Stillman, Ph.D., president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory discusses that you need to acquire multiple changes in genes estimated to be about 5-7 genes perhaps on average, to get a full-blown cancer.

Bruce Stillman, Ph.D. is president and chief executive officer of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He is interested in understanding the mechanism and control of DNA replication in higher cells. Working in baker's yeast, he has identified DNA sequences and proteins that interact to initiatiate chromosome duplication. “You need to acquire multiple changes in the genes, multiple genes, to get a full-blown cancer estimates to be about 5-7 genes perhaps on average. Those changes accumulate over a period of time. Some of those changes accelerate the rate of accumulation of that. What is interesting is that some of them are inherited ahead of time. So BRCA-1 for instance, you are born with one of the niches already taken out of your belt and then to accumulate the other 4 or 5 changes, you are already on the way. And that is why there's a higher probability of getting cancer.”

bruce stillman, mutations, cancer cells, genomic instability, brca 1, cancer