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Mystery of the environmental triggers for cancer deepens - The Guardian

Mystery of the environmental triggers for cancer deepens - The Guardian

Oct 24, 2021 1 min, 12 secs

Michael Stratton, director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said recent results from an international cancer research study – which aimed to pinpoint environmental triggers involved in oeosophageal cancer – indicated current scientific understanding of tumour formation was inadequate.

The research – on a type known as oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma – was aimed at uncovering why certain parts of the world suffer extremely high rates of the disease.

“All sorts of different external factors have been put forward to explain these high rates,” said Stratton.

To try to solve the mystery, Stratton and his team were awarded £20m by Cancer Grand Challenges – an initiative founded by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute in the US.

In the case of lung cancer, it is caused by tobacco, and in the case of skin cancer, it is triggered by the ultra-violet component of sunlight,” Stratton told the Observer.

The aim of the CRUK study was to uncover a similar mutational signature for oesophageal cancer, one that would point to the environmental cause for the disease’s high rates in Kenya and other nations.

“It is a setback, because if we had found a distinctive mutational signature, we would have been able to make hypotheses about its cause – something in the diets or habits of groups with high oesophageal cancer rates,” said Stratton.

The study, published last week in Nature Genetics, indicates that scientists will have to think more broadly about the factors that cause cancer, Stratton added

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