{"41245":{"#nid":"41245","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Cancer: The Cost of Being Smarter Than Chimps?","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAre the cognitively superior brains of humans, in part, responsible for our higher rates of cancer? That\u0027s a question that has nagged at John McDonald, chair of Georgia Tech\u0027s School of Biology and chief research scientist at the Ovarian Cancer Institute, for a while. Now, after an initial study, it seems that McDonald is on to something.  The new study is available online in the journal Medical Hypothesis and will appear in the forthcoming issue of the journal.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022I was always intrigued by the fact that chimpanzees appear to have lower rates of cancer than humans,\u0022 said McDonald. \u0022So we went back and reanalyzed some previously reported gene expression studies including data that were not used in the original analyses.\u0022\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EMcDonald and his graduate students, Gaurav Arora and Nalini Polivarapu, compared chimp-human gene expression patterns in five tissues: brain, testes, liver, kidneys and heart. They found distinct differences in the way apoptosis - or programmed cell death - operates, suggesting that humans do not \u0022self-destroy\u0022 cells as effectively as chimpanzees do. Apoptosis is one of the primary mechanisms by which our bodies destroy cancer cells.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022The results from our analysis suggest that humans aren\u0027t as efficient as chimpanzees in carrying out programmed cell death. We believe this difference may have evolved as a way to increase brain size and associated cognitive ability in humans, but the cost could be an increased propensity for cancer,\u0022 said McDonald.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ELike all evolutionary hypotheses, this can\u0027t be proven absolutely, according to McDonald. However, his lab has recently obtained additional direct experimental evidence consistent with the hypothesis that apoptotic function is more efficient in chimps than in humans.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"A study suggests that humans cognitively superior brains means more instances of cancer compared to chimpanzees.","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Do our cognitively superior brains mean more instance of cancer?"}],"uid":"27310","created_gmt":"2009-06-08 00:00:00","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:02:18","author":"David Terraso","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2009-06-10T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2009-06-10T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"41246":{"id":"41246","type":"image","title":"John McDonald","body":null,"created":"1449174292","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 20:24:52","changed":"1475894366","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:39:26","alt":"John McDonald","file":{"fid":"190038","name":"tjk67301.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tjk67301_1.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tjk67301_1.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1504062,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/tjk67301_1.jpg?itok=ZHhnV-Pa"}}},"media_ids":["41246"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/ovariancancerinstitute.org\/","title":"Ovarian Cancer Institute"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.biology.gatech.edu\/faculty\/john-mcdonald\/index.php","title":"John McDonald"}],"groups":[{"id":"1183","name":"Home"}],"categories":[{"id":"140","name":"Cancer Research"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"385","name":"cancer"},{"id":"384","name":"chimp"},{"id":"386","name":"human"},{"id":"281","name":"mcdonald"},{"id":"388","name":"oci"},{"id":"387","name":"ovarian"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Tech Media Relations\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELaura Diamond\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:laura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Elaura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-894-6016\u003Cbr \/\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-660-2926\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["david.terraso@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}