{"id":149736,"date":"2022-11-08T19:22:40","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T01:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/scientists-are-using-the-dark-matter-of-the-human-genome-to-help-cure-cancer"},"modified":"2022-11-08T19:22:40","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T01:22:40","slug":"scientists-are-using-the-dark-matter-of-the-human-genome-to-help-cure-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/scientists-are-using-the-dark-matter-of-the-human-genome-to-help-cure-cancer","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Are Using the \u201cDark Matter\u201d of the Human Genome To Help Cure Cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-are-using-the-dark-matter-of-the-human-genome-to-help-cure-cancer2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In Switzerland, cancer is the second-leading cause of death. Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the cancer form that kills the most people and is still mostly incurable. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of patients survive the metastatic stage for a long time, and even recently approved therapies can only prolong patients\u2019 lives by a few months. As a result, researchers are looking for innovative cancer treatments. Researchers from the <a href=https:\/\/scitechdaily.com\/tag\/university-of-bern\/>University of Bern<\/a> and the Insel Hospital identified new targets for drug development for this cancer type in a recent study published in the journal <em>Cell Genomics<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>They searched for novel targets in the poorly understood class of genes known as \u201clong noncoding RNAs (Ribonucleic acids)\u201d (lncRNAs). LncRNAs are abundant in the \u201cDark Matter,\u201d or non-protein-coding DNA<\/p>\n<p>DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person\u2019s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Switzerland, cancer is the second-leading cause of death. Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the cancer form that kills the most people and is still mostly incurable. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of patients survive the metastatic stage for a long time, and even recently approved therapies can only prolong patients\u2019 lives by a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}