Best of Breast: news for week ending 11 July 2014

New developments in Breast Cancer and Cancer, from Google Alerts, for the week ending 11 July 2014.

How to name a cancer protein/gene

I’ve often wondered how scientists come up with the names for these discoveries.  It’s not as if TARBP2 or alpha v beta 6 trip off the tongue.  I have a theory that scientists just dip their spoons into a can of alphabet soup, and whatever comes up is the name du jour … .

Something I’ve had to do this week is re-write a number of headlines.  Some of the tabloids seem to view every discovery of a new oncogene or signalling pathway as a !BREAKTHROUGH! in treatment.  Now that I’ve been scanning developments for more than a year, I’m more realistic.  Most of these “breakthroughs” have been realised only on rodents, and they’re also years away from commercial release, plus they’re only one bit in the jigsaw puzzle that is cancer.  I hate it when newspapers tout the latest cure for cancer, which is anything but.