Cancer Passes From Mother To Unborn Child

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Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Also Included In: Immune System / Vaccines;  Biology / Biochemistry;  Blood / Hematology
Article Date: 13 Oct 2009 - 11:00 PDT

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A team of scientists from Japan and the UK has published a paper describing a case of a mother with cancer passing the disease to her unborn child and how they proved it.

The study was the work of first author Takeshi Isoda from the Department of Pediatrics and Developmental Biology at Tokyo Medical and Dental University, and colleagues, and appears in the 12 October online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS.

As far as we know, cases of mother to offspring transmission of cancer are rare and few have been recorded over the last 100 years, wrote the authors, and there is barely any evidence that shows the mother's cancer cells match the baby's.

In the paper, Isoda and colleagues describe a case where a 28-year old mother was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after giving birth to a baby girl who developed similar symptoms when she was nearly a year old.

Using various methods, Isoda and colleagues were able to show that the cancer cells in the baby were a genetic match to those of the mother. First they generated clones of the cancer cells from both mother and baby and found that they "shared the same unique BCR-ABL1 genomic fusion sequence, indicating a shared, single-cell origin", and then they showed that "microsatellite markers in the infant cancer were all of maternal origin".

They also found that the baby's cancer cells had inherited a pattern of missing genes (notably a "major deletion on one copy of chromosome 6p that included deletion of HLA alleles") that probably helped the cells avoid detection and destruction by the placental barrier and the baby's immune system.

"Immunologically silent cancer clone transmission from mother to offspring."
Takeshi Isoda, Anthony M. Ford, Daisuke Tomizawa, Frederik W. van Delft, David Gonzalez De Castro, Norkio Mitsuiki, Joannah Score, Tomohiko Taki, Tomohiro Morio, Masatoshi Takagi, Hiroh Saji, Mel Greaves, and Shuki Mizutani.
PNAS, Published online before print October 12, 2009
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0904658106

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

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