When you think of a cure for cancer and diabetes, what comes to mind? Probably scientists, hard at work in a lab. But surely not a group of Ecuadorians who are all under three and a half feet tall. According to this article, scientists have discovered a that these people are immune not only to cancer, but also to diabetes. This is because they have a disease known as Laron syndrome, and it may be the key to finding a cure for two very deadly diseases.
The cause of this syndrome is directly tied to the cell cycle. It turns out that Laron syndrome is caused by a specific mutation of a gene which is a receptor for Human Growth Hormone. This gene is known as IGF-1, and if a person has Laron syndrome they have very little IGF-1. Therefore, the Human Growth Hormone is not accepted by the cells, and the person does not grow. This ties into the ideas of proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressors. Certain parts of the cell, called proto-oncogenes, tell the cell when to go through the cell cycle and split apart. If there are no proto-oncogenes, as with Laron syndrome, the cell will not split.
This is a remarkable progression in the war against cancer and other deadly diseases. If scientists can find a way to change the ways our genes deal with the Human Growth Hormone to cure cancer without harming us in any other way, it would be truly remarkable. However, I highly doubt this could happen. It is always dangerous to mutate a person's genes, and without proper checks this could create even larger problems than cancer itself. Nevertheless, it seems that the secret to curing cancer could really have been hiding in a small village of Ecuador.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/science/17longevity.html?_r=1
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