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Picture Credit: Dana Burns-Pizer 
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 Picture Credit: Audra Geres
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http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/101299hth-brody.html
has a wonderful series of articles on the cancers
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Picture Credit: Dana Burns-Pizer
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Picture Credit: Audra Geres
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Cancer is not a single disease but over a hundred different diseases. 12 major cancers . Breast cancer itself is at least 3 diseases.
WomensHealth in the NYTimes has articles on various cancers: Breast, colorectal, lung, ovarian
Some other related links :broccoli pharminfonet fat and breast cancer American cancer society grapes Mayo clinic UPenn
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There are least 2 types of estrogen receptors. Tamoxifen blocks estrogen from receptors in some tissues such as breast, while it mimics estrogen in other tissues. Thus it can help protect against breast cancer while offering estrogen's protective benefits with osteoporosis and heart attack . |
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Taxol from the Yew tree binds to microtubules which are necessary for cell division among many other things. |
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DNA requires the nucleic acid base Thymine which is made by methylating Uracil. The chemotherapy drug Fluoro uracil blocks this reaction halting cell reproduction. |
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Folate (a vitamin) is involved with methylations such as the one above that converts uracil to thymine. The chemotherapy drug methotrexate blocks the processing of folate into an active form. The net effect is the same as with flurouracil |
Herceptin
Oliver A. Hampton and Aleksandar Milosavljevic at the Baylor College of Medicine have compared the genome of a breast cancer cell with that of normal cells. They find 157 rearrangements.
. Round the outer ring are shown the 23 chromosomes of the human genome. The lines in blue, in the third ring, show internal rearrangements, in which a stretch of DNA has been moved from one site to another within the same chromosome. The red lines, in the bull's eye, designate switches of DNA from one chromosome to another.
One of the rearrangements disrupts a gene called RAD51C which is involved in mending serious chromosome breaks. The impairment of double strand break repair could be a major cause of all the other rearrangements
SEVEN CHOICES
Two-thirds of cancer deaths can be prevented by healthy lifestyle choices. The American Cancer Society suggests seven choices:
