Home » Psychology news » Cancer-linked mutation accelerates growth of abnormal stroke-causing brain blood vessels

Cancer-linked mutation accelerates growth of abnormal stroke-causing brain blood vessels

April 28, 2021 by

Researchers have discovered an explanation for why cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs) -- clusters of dilated blood vessels in the brain -- can suddenly grow to cause seizures or stroke. Specifically, they found that a specific, acquired mutation in a cancer-causing gene (PIK3CA) could exacerbate existing CCMs in the brain. Furthermore, repurposing an already existing anticancer drug showed promise in mouse models of CCMs in improving brain-vascular health and preventing bleeding into the brain tissue.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>