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SUBTLE CLUES: DNA from bowel cells in these samples can show whether the ras gene is mutated, indicating an increased cancer risk.
JAMES KING-HOLMES/SCIENCE SOURCE
WHEN IT comes to the state of cancer survival, Susan Bates feels like many of us. “It’s incredibly frustrating,” she says. For Bates, who treats pancreatic and other cancers at Columbia University, the frustration is worsened by knowing her enemy—an elusive gene that “makes cancer grow very fast.”