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

In this week’s post, we will highlight proteins specifically expressed in a tissue with extensive plasticity - the female mammary glands. The evolutionary origin of mammary and milk gland-like structures is believed to date all the way back to 300 million years ago, and glandular secretory apocrine-like units in the skin of synapsids, an ancestor to mammals.

The mammary gland develops from the epidermis and is mainly composed of branched columnar and cuboidal epithelial cells that form distinct lobes...Read more

The pituitary gland plays a crucial role in human physiology, and together with the hypothalamus this highly conserved and elegant system form a link between the nervous and endocrine system, by controlling the functions of the thyroid, adrenal glands, and the gonads, and also regulating growth, lactation, and water preservation.

This gland, also called hypophysis, consists of two separate lobes with dual embryonic origin; the anterior (adeno) pituitary gland originates from the oral cavity, and the posterior (neural) pituitary gland develops from the neural plate...Read more

A team from the Human Protein Atlas is attending the AACR Annual Meeting 2017 in Washington DC right now. This year, the meeting covers topics on research propelling cancer prevention and cures. The Human Protein Atlas is represented by a booth where researchers give a personalized tutorial of the portal to interested visitors. In addition, a demo version of a new Pathology Atlas containing information on prognostic genes and proteins associated with clinical outcome. The Pathology Atlas focuses on 17 major cancer types in humans...Read more

More than a century ago, Piccolino M. Cajal published his groundbreaking work on the retina. At that time, Cajal was eager to confirm previous observations he had made in other neural tissues, and he considered the retina very suitable to study due to its simple organization and structure.

The human retina is a multilayered neural tissue that originates from the developing brain, and populates the innermost layer of the eye, called the inner photosensitive layer. The retina is composed of polarized photosensitive neurons called rods and cones...Read more