Weakness of the stronger sex

Why do men get cancer more often than women

Kirill Stasevich, Science and Life (nkj.ru )

Researchers from the Australian The Peter McCullum Cancer Center decided to find out why men suffer from cancer more often than women – unless, of course, we take into account tumors associated with the reproductive system (in the sense that men simply cannot have cervical cancer). It is known that cells become malignant due to mutations. One of the most common cancer mutations is mutations in the TP53 gene. It encodes the protein p53, which is often called the "guardian of the genome" – p53 monitors DNA damage, and if too many of them accumulate, it stops cell division and turns on the program of apoptosis (cell suicide). If p53 does not work well due to a mutation, or there is very little of it in the cell, other mutations will begin to accumulate in the DNA, which can provoke unrestrained cancer division.

The authors of the work suggested that the sexual bias in the statistics of malignant diseases is somehow related to the p53 protein and its TR53 gene. Comparing mutations in 12 types of tumors, the researchers found that, firstly, mutations in TP53 do occur more often in men than in women. We wrote at the beginning of the year that among cancer mutations there are those that are more common in men and those that are more common in women; apparently, mutations in TP53 belong to the number of predominantly male.

But that's not all. The p53 protein and its gene work in tandem with other proteins and genes that affect the activity of TP53 and p53. And if something happens to the partner genes, then p53 will work differently, even if there are no mutations in it itself. And so, as it turned out, there is a whole group of genes on the X chromosome that affect the "guardian of the genome". And thirdly, as stated in an article in Nature Communications (Haupt et al., Identification of cancer sex-disparity in the functional integrity of p53 and its X chromosome network), in women, mutated X-chromosomal genes affecting p53 are often simply turned off, and therefore cannot have a bad effect on p53. In men, such genes continue to work even after mutations, confusing p53, which again is fraught with malignant cell degeneration. Since women have two X chromosomes, it can be assumed that copies of the necessary genes can work on another chromosome, where they have not deteriorated from mutations. However, it remains to be seen exactly what mechanisms help the cells of the female body to turn off dangerous genes.

In the meantime, we can only say that the bias in the statistics of malignant tumors between men and women is associated with the famous p53 protein, and this must be taken into account if we want to learn how to estimate the probability of risk of such diseases in advance.

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