Earlier this morning, we had the chance to hear Mrs. Rachel Baumgartner Lozano speak about her story of the miraculous cure of her cancer through the intercession of Blessed William Joseph Chaminade. Mrs. Lozano said that she was diagnosed with an Askin's tumor.
So what's an Askin's tumor?
An Askin's tumor falls in the group of sarcomas called the Ewing family and is a peripheral neuralepithelioma (PNET) of the chest wall. The Ewing sarcomas are related because the all share a reciprocal translocation between chromosomes 11 and 22 and similar cellular physiology. The translocation occurs in over 95% of Ewing sarcomas.
The translocation involves moving the Ewing sarcoma gene (EWS) from chromosome 22 and attaching it to the friend leukemia integration 1 transcription factor (FLI1) on chromosome 11. This combination of genes, EWS-FLI1, codes for a protein that acts as an abnormal transcription factor and it is implicated as a possible cause of Ewing sarcomas.
The Ewing sarcomas are very rare, occurring in only about 3 cases for every million people in the United States with 64% of cases occurring in teenagers.
Reference:
Toretsky, Jeffrey A. "Ewing Sarcoma and Primitive Neuroectodermal Tumors." emedicine. 17 June 2008. web. 10 March 2011. <http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/990378-overview>
