Next in our series of articles on cancer is Pancreatic cancer, a relatively rare cancer associated with very poor prognosis. The vast majority of tumors originate from ductal cells and a small fraction are endocrine tumors. Over 80% of pancreatic cancers develop at ages above 60 years and most tumors are detected at late stages of the disease when the cancer has spread beyond the pancreas.

There is a great need for biomarkers to facilitate early detection and help establishment of diagnosis. Smoking, obesity, physical inactivity and long-lasting inflammation in the pancreas are some of the factors that lead to an increased risk of pancreatic cancer...Read more

In this week's Pathology Atlas blog post, we highlight genes with prognostic association to ovarian cancer , as September is National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month in the US. Ovarian cancer is the fifth most frequent cause of cancer death in women, and 50% of all ovarian cancers are diagnosed in women older than 65 years of age.

Epithelial ovarian carcinoma is one of the most common gynecologic malignancy. There are five subtypes of epithelial ovarian carcinoma, of which high-grade serous carcinoma is the most common...Read more

As part of the release of the Pathology Atlas, the Human Protein Atlas Blog presents brief and informative summaries of most cancers, and highlight genes with prognostic association in the different cancer forms. The Pathology Atlas is an open access database which includes quantitative transcriptomics data and spatial proteomics data of the major human cancer types that have been analyzed using a systems level approach.

We focus on prostate cancer in this week's blog post to highlight Prostate Cancer Awareness Month in North America and the European Prostate Cancer Awareness Day on the 27th of September...Read more

The Pathology Atlas, recently published in Science presents key proteins associated with different cancer types. This week's news article will focus on breast cancer and proteins related to cancer prognosis.

Breast cancer is the most common invasive cancer form in women worldwide. The cancer can roughly be classified as ductal or lobular breast cancer depending on the origin. The majority of breast cancers develop sporadically, but for 5-10% of patients there is an inherited factor associated with increased breast cancer risk, namely the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Women with abnormal BRCA1 or BRCA2 have higher risk of developing breast cancer...Read more

Previously we have highlighted proteins expressed in the human neural retina. This week's article emphasizes the cellular structure and molecular dynamics of the lens.

The main function of the lens is to focus light on the retina. The passage of light through the cornea, lens and vitreous all the way to the retinal layer of the eye is only possible due to transparency of the tissue. Although the lens is very protein-rich, light absorption and light scattering in the lens is minimal.

The lens comprises non-diving lens cells which are mainly composed of ordered proteins called crystallins...Read more