Oncogene

An oncogene is a gene that has the potential to cause cancer. In tumor cells, they are often mutated or expressed at high levels.

Most normal cells will undergo a programmed form of rapid cell death (apoptosis) when critical functions are altered. Activated oncogenes can cause those cells designated for apoptosis to survive and proliferate instead. Most oncogenes require an additional step, such as mutations in another gene, or environmental factors, such as viral infection, to cause cancer. Since the 1970s, dozens of oncogenes have been identified in human cancer. Many cancer drugs target the proteins encoded by oncogenes.

The first theory of oncogenes was given by Danish physicist Niels Henrik Arley (1938-40 scientific private secretary for Niels Bohr, 1947-53 head of Copenhagen University geophysics research) around 1950, but was rejected by contemporaries as nonsense. Later on the term "oncogene" was rediscovered in 1969 by National Cancer Institute scientists George Todaro and Robert Heubner.

The first confirmed oncogene was discovered in 1970 and was termed src (pronounced sarc as in sarcoma). Src was in fact first discovered as an oncogene in a chicken retrovirus. Experiments performed by Dr. G. Steve Martin of the University of California, Berkeley demonstrated that the Src was indeed the oncogene of the virus. The first nucleotide sequence of v-src was sequenced in 1980 by A.P. Czernilofsky et al.

In 1976 Drs. Dominique Stehelin, J. Michael Bishop and Harold E. Varmus of the University of California, San Francisco demonstrated that oncogenes were activated proto-oncogenes, found in many organisms including humans. For this discovery, proving Todaro and Heubner's "oncogene theory", Bishop and Varmus were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1989.

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