Alex Matthews-King - Major breakthrough in cancer care
Scientists have
heralded a “breakthrough” in cancer treatment after deciphering the genetic
code of thousands of tumours providing a road map for more effective treatment
and new drug development.
A groundbreaking
international collaboration has shown how tumours in different parts of the
body, which have previously been treated as separate diseases, have molecular
similarities which could render them vulnerable to drugs already on the market.
The research redefines
cancer types beyond terms such as breast and bowel, which are descriptions
only of where the cancer first arose. Instead, the newly uncovered molecular
makeup of cancers could lead to “drastic changes” in how the best drugs for
patients are chosen. Doctors told The
Independent it could change the “traditional” method of treatment
based on the location of tumours and allow clinical trials to “identify
patients most likely to benefit” from experimental drugs.
The Cancer Genome
Atlas is the largest project of its kind and contains the genetic information
for every cell of tumours taken from more than 11,000 patients, across 33
different types of cancer.
Comparing this new
data with information on treatments licensed for use in other cancers, the
authors showed that 50 per cent of these 11,000 tumours were had potentially
effective treatments already out there.
The project also
traced these tumours back to mutations in 300 different genes, including well
studied types like the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 genes, where mutations significantly
increase the risk of breast cancer. It also found that
around 8 per cent of the cancer-causing mutations were inherited from
parental DNA, rather than mutations caused by things like sun damage or
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