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Fifty years since DNA repair was linked to cancer

In 1968, a defect in DNA repair was found to underlie a disorder that makes people extremely sensitive to sunlight. This finding continues to influence research into the origins, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
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  1. Richard D. Wood

    1. Richard D. Wood is in the Department of Epigenetics and Molecular Carcinogenesis, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Smithville, Texas 78957, USA.

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Some people are born with exceptional sensitivity to sunlight. Fifty years ago, writing in Nature, the biologist James Cleaver1 reported a study of one such condition, and concluded that a failure of DNA repair was related to the extreme susceptibility of affected individuals to skin cancer. This was the first description of defective DNA repair in a genetically inherited disorder that makes people prone to cancer. The concepts that developed from this work now permeate research into the genetic origins of cancer and its treatment.

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Nature 557, 648-649 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05255-1

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