Down’s syndrome and cancer

The most recent Nature podcast (21 May 2009) has a news story about Down’s syndrome and cancer. Most types of cancer are much less common among people with Down’s syndrome. Since Down’s syndrome is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21, researchers naturally want to know whether a gene on that chromosome is responsible for the reduced incidence of cancer. The podcast interviews researchers from two promising studies of candidate genes.

Here is the abstract of the medical paper discussed on the podcast.

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