Research conducted by a team at the Huntsman Cancer Institute may help shed new light onto exactly how certain types of colon cancer develop.

Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the whole of the Western world and in recent years the efforts to understand the disease have been stepped up.

Those who study the causes of colon cancer have already concluded that about 30 percent of all diagnosed colon cancers are caused by an inherited gene of some sort. At this point only about four percent of those genes have been identified.

Deboarh Neklason PhD is a member of the team that conducted the Huntsman Study explains “Those cases where the genes have been identified tend to be pretty dramatic,” she says “Colon cancer develops at young ages and the cases are easier to figure out. It’s the other 25 percent that’s tough. These cases are more like sporadic colon cancer and are much more subtle,”

The study Dr Neklason headed looked at the cases of a number of siblings who had been diagnosed with colon cancer. As their research progressed the team noticed similarities in a region of a single chromosome known as 7q31. This finding led them to believe that a piece of genetic material could possibly be the cause of certain colon cancers that seem to run in families.

The Huntsman study looked at siblings who had been diagnosed with colon cancer. In the course of their research the scientists noticed certain similarities in a region of a single chromosome, known as 7q31, leading them to believe that a piece of genetic material may indeed be the cause of a certain set of colon cancers that seem to run in particular families. According to Neklason it is those genetic similarities in colon cancer patients that would suggest that the region holds a gene that is causing colon cancer.

The program that was the subject of the study is called the “Sibling Pair Project” and in this instance the genetic material of eighty two siblings was analyzed over a period of time. In addition to their discovery of the potentially deadly gene the group also found that siblings who did  share this genetic region developed cancer over 3 years before those who did not. These people tended to be younger than the average colon cancer sufferer.

As the quest to discover more about all forms of colon cancer and develop new tests to more accurately diagnose the disease the hope is that this study, first published in 2008 will go some way to helping a screening test for genetically based colon cancers become a reality someday.