Study: Cancer may pass from mother to unborn child

October 14, 2009 by Lin Edwards weblog
baby, infant, newborn

Image: Wikimedia Commons

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study has provided genetic evidence for the first time that it is possible for a mother to transmit cancer to her unborn child via the placenta.

Cases have been reported on rare occasions where a mother and newborn develop the same , but there has never been proof until now that the mother passed the cancer to the child. In theory it should not be possible, since the infant's should destroy the cancer cells.

The team of British and Japanese researchers studied a case in Japan in which the 28-year-old mother developed leukemia shortly after giving birth to a daughter. Eleven months later the baby developed a cancer with the same genetic markers as her mother's cancer cells.

Using advanced genetic fingerprinting techniques, the scientists were able to prove the leukemia cells in the baby were present at her birth, and that they could only have come from the mother, since the cancer cells had an identical mutation in the cancer gene BCR-ABL1.

They also looked at how the cancer cells from the mother could have avoided being destroyed by the infant's immune system, and discovered that the baby's cancer cells lacked part of the DNA that would have indicated to the immune system the cells were foreign. The leader of the team, Professor Mel Greaves of the Institute of Cancer Research in Sutton, UK, said the were in effect invisible to the immune system and therefore were able to implant without being attacked.

The transfer of cancer from mother to unborn child is rare, with only around 30 cases known, and the mother usually has a or . Professor Greaves stressed that even if the mother has cancer it is still extremely unlikely she would pass it on to the child, but if pregnant women with cancer are concerned, they should seek the advice of their specialists.

Chief Clinician at Cancer Research UK, Professor Peter Johnson, said the research was important because it shows that for cancers to grow they need to elude the immune system. This means we might be able to develop new treatments that help alert the patient's immune system to the presence of cancer.

The research findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

More information: Immunologically silent cancer clone transmission from mother to offspring, PNAS, doi:10.1073/pnas.0904658106

© 2009 PhysOrg.com


Rank 5 /5 (2 votes)
Related Stories
Relevant PhysicsForums posts
  • Is Everyday Technology Killing Us?
    createdFeb 08, 2012
  • Exercise and weight loss
    createdFeb 08, 2012
  • Why do we have head aches? Our brains can't feel anything.
    createdFeb 07, 2012
  • "The end of diseases" by David Agus, interview from Daily Show with Jon Stewart
    createdFeb 04, 2012
  • Oncolytic adenovirus
    createdFeb 04, 2012
  • Nutrition label stuffs and diets
    createdFeb 02, 2012
  • More from Physics Forums - Medical Sciences

More news stories

Complex wiring of the nervous system may rely on a just a handful of genes and proteins

Researchers at the Salk Institute have discovered a startling feature of early brain development that helps to explain how complex neuron wiring patterns are programmed using just a handful of critical genes. ...

Medicine & Health / Research

created 29 minutes ago | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Q&A: Obama and the birth control controversy

(AP) -- What birth control debate? A half-century after the introduction of the pill, acceptance of birth control by American women is virtually universal.

Medicine & Health / Health

created 26 minutes ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Human cognitive performance suffers following natural disasters, researchers find

Not surprisingly, victims of a natural disaster can experience stress and anxiety, but a new study indicates that it might also cause them to make more errors - some serious - in their daily lives. In their upcoming Human Fa ...

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created 1 hour ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Both maternal and paternal age linked to autism

Older maternal and paternal age are jointly associated with having a child with autism, according to a recently published study led by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created 4 hours ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Curry spice component may help slow prostate tumor growth

Curcumin, an active component of the Indian curry spice turmeric, may help slow down tumor growth in castration-resistant prostate cancer patients on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), a study from researchers ...

Medicine & Health / Cancer

created 5 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast


CIA website offline, Anonymous takes credit

The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was unresponsive on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.

The power of estrogen -- male snakes attract other males

A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest ...

New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission

Error-correcting codes are one of the triumphs of the digital age. They’re a way of encoding information so that it can be transmitted across a communication channel — such as an optical fiber o ...

Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago

(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...

Could Venus be shifting gear?

(PhysOrg.com) -- ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft has discovered that our cloud-covered neighbour spins a little slower than previously measured. Peering through the dense atmosphere in the infrared, the ...

Fool's gold may prove an unlikely alternative to overexploited catalytic materials

Catalytic materials, which lower the energy barriers for chemical reactions, are used in everything from the commercial production of chemicals to catalytic converters in car engines. However, with current catalytic materials ...