Kinetics of cancer: a method to test hypotheses of genetic causation.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Mouse studies have recently compared the age-onset patterns of cancer between different genotypes. Genes associated with earlier onset are tentatively assigned a causal role in carcinogenesis. These standard analyses ignore the great amount of information about kinetics contained in age-onset curves. We present a method for analyzing kinetics that measures quantitatively the causal role of candidate genes in cancer progression. We use our method to demonstrate a clear association between somatic mutation rates of different DNA mismatch repair (MMR) genotypes and the kinetics of cancer progression.

Methods

Most experimental studies report age-onset curves as the fraction diagnosed with tumors at each age for each group. We use such data to estimate smoothed surviva

SUBMITTER: Frank SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1352380 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature