Breast cancer: The menacing face of Janus kinase

摘要

Janus, the two-faced Roman god of gates and doors, beginnings and endings, symbolizes important transitions. How appropriate therefore that Janus kinase 2 has been discovered to control the transition from normal mammary gland development to breast cancer in a recent manuscript from the Schreiber laboratory published in Cell Death and Differentiation. The lifetime risk of breast cancer for women in the western world is 1 in 8 and the incidence rate is rising toward epidemic levels with 1.4 million women diagnosed annually with this disease worldwide http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/ world/breast-cancer-world/.