Dr. Robert Sandstrom Lectures at Lower Columbia College
“LCC lecturer discusses progress, future of genetic studies”
Cheryll Borgaard
Daily News, February 13, 2009
When it comes to identifying human genes, scientists and researchers have barely scratched the surface.
“Of the 20,000 to 30,000 genes known in humans, we only understand 2,000 to 3,000 of them,” Dr. Robert Sandstrom said Thursday at Lower Columbia College.
Sandstrom was the latest guest speaker in LCC’s nine-week lecture series titled “The New Frontier: Science, Medicine and the Future.”
Sandstrom presented a history of genetic study starting with Gregor Mendel in the mid-1800s and continuing through the complex computer mapping technology of today. Genetic studies are helping doctors better understand cancers and tumors, he told an audience of nearly 100.
Dr. Robert Sandstrom, Lower Columbia Pathologists/Northwest Medical Analytic Laboratory
“In tumor genetics, we already know there are some inherited mutations,” Sandstrom said. “Cancers we will find go through sort of Darwinian changes. We’ve tended to view cancer as a single picture, but we’re starting to understand it’s a moving picture.”
Genetic engineering could be used to battle tumors by introducing mutations – in this case, deliberate flaws – “that will disarm or kill the tumor,” said Sandstrom, owner of Lower Columbia Pathologists in Longview.
Sandstrom, along with three other doctors, co-authored a paper in 2005 with the hypothesis that some forms of breast cancer could be caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV) entering through the nipple. The paper had some connection to work on a cervical cancer vaccine that won a German doctor the 2008 Nobel Prize for medicine.
In his lecture Thursday, Sandstrom said genome sequencing (charting all of the DNA in our chromosomes) could be used to identify inheritance groups.
“That will be a field day for genealogists and will shed fascinating light on migration, intermarriage and the biological history of our species.”
Despite how differently people look, as humans “We are 99.99 percent linked to each other,” he said. “Everyone can trace their DNA back to a very small group of humans 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. Your genetic makeup has made it all this way. We literally are one in a million.”
Asked how close scientists are to using DNA research to cure or eradicate diseases such as diabetes, Sandstrom said, “We’re very close and in some respects, we’re there.”
But many chronic diseases, such as diabetes, are a big challenge because they may have several genetic roots and are affected by diet and the environment.
Sandstrom also was asked if parents “will ever be able to pick our children’s eye colors.”
That brings up a multitude of ethical questions, he said.
“There’s a probability that information will be available in the next 10 to 20 years for mate selections,” he said. “Historically, we’ve made a lot of mistakes applying limited knowledge to questions of race, of survival. There are a lot of problems theologically and ethically humankind has to work through.”
