Black women with cancers of the uterus are less likely to survive the disease than white women, and relatively little progress has been made over the past two decades to narrow this racial difference. That is the conclusion of a new study published in the March 15, 2009 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

Cancer is a genetic disease. It occurs when changes take place in the genes that regulate cell division, cell growth, cell death, cell signalling and blood vessel formation – either due to mutations caused by external factors such as smoking or radiation – or due to inherited changes.

Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine may be one step closer to understanding why past oral contraceptive use dramatically lowers the risk of ovarian and uterine cancers later in life.

Researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) today announced the discovery of previously unrecognized alterations in a gene called FGFR2 in a subset of endometrial cancers, the most common gynecologic cancer in the United States. The mutations in FGFR2 result in uncontrolled cell division, a hallmark of cancer.