A cancer cure may be far away, but a doctor at the University's Hershey Medical Center has identified the chromosome that may be the key to stopping the spread of the disease, which claimed 875 Centre County residents during the late '80s.

Dr. Dan Welch, assistant professor of pathology at the medical center, found that a defective gene was the cause of metastasis -- the spreading of cancer cells throughout the body.

By replacing the entire chromosome on which the gene is located, Welch stopped metastasis in the cells of laboratory mice.

"It's an important step, but it's not a cure," he said.

Metastasis is one of the leading causes of death among people with cancer, Welch said, adding that during a five-year period the cure rate of people who experience metastasis is nearly zero.

"Most people don't die if they have a cancer that's just localized in one place," he said.

Human cells contain 46 chromosomes that each contain literally thousands of pieces of information in the form of genes. Welch's research identified that malignant melanoma -- or skin cancer --cells, lack the piece of information that should keep them from spreading. By implanting healthy human chromosomes into cancerous cells, they "learn" the information once more and don't spread.

"That hybrid is able to form tumors that will not spread," he said.

John Milner, head of the nutrition department and also a cancer researcher, said the findings could be important in the ongoing attempts to discover what stops the disease.

"One of the major complications of cancer is the spreading of cancer," he said.

But Kenneth Johnson, a Paul Berg professor of , was more cautious. He likened looking for a particular gene among the 46 chromosomes to looking for a needle in a haystack.

"You've narrowed it down to which one of these haystacks to look in," he said, adding most previous attempts at curbing cancer growth have aimed at killing quickly replicating cancer cells.

Erika Olander (junior-molecular cell biology) is also careful about her enthusiasm.

"That sounds promising," she said, but added that she could not respond to Welch's findings until more experts have done research on his studies.