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Here's the link to an article about some new research - particularly of interest to us Metavivors!
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadian-researchers-make-brea st-cancer-breakthrough/article1315753/
Thanks Frosty!
I love this stuff!! SO clever – this is where the dollars need to go!! - from another report I read on the same research, at: http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=n072838623
….”When the researchers looked at DNA in cells from the tumours, they were able to tease out 32 mutations - or spelling mistakes - among the three billion-letter alphabet of the genome.
Only five of the mutations were present in the original tumour.”
"And there were 19 of the mutations that we just didn't see (in the original tumour)," said Aparicio.
"So what that told us was the tumour had evolved considerably from the primary to the eventual metastasis (in study patient-ggc) nine years later."
He said the discovery has big implications for the development of new cancer drugs, which may need to be designed to deal with the various genetic mutations.
“What the new approaches are leading us to now look at are can we associate mutations in the tumours with the response to drugs?"
………………………………………………………………………
Now…if they could only find a way to make a drug as smart as a cancer cell!!
xxxGGC
Sequencing the genome of cancer cells is explicitly based upon the assumption that the pathways - network of genes - of tumor cells can be known in sufficient detail to control cancer. Each cancer cell can be different and the cancer cells that are present change and evolve with time.
It was thought that if billions of dollars were poured into genotyping by DNA sequencing of primary tumor would find the critical mutations that cause cancer and then make drugs to them so that each patient can have a unique treatment.
The major problem with this is the primary tumor is so heterogeneous that each cell within it is likely to have a unique genomic signature at the level of mutations, as well as at the level of gross genomic imbalances and methylation signatures.
And the cells that will be dangerous to the health of the patient and depart to other organs make up only a minute fraction of the tumor. They are also genomically different to the cells in the primary tumor.
Which of the millions of mutations, methylation changes, and gemomic imbalances are in the cells that leave the primary tumor? This cannot be ascertained by bioinformatic and statistical methods. It involves isolating the cells that depart.
Also, which of the genomic alterations that are in the departing cells will be instrumental in the process of subsequent metastatic growth? Most of the cells that leave home don't survive the journey in the blood or lymph systems, and many cancerous cells that eventually do lodge in a distant organ simply remain dormant.
It would seem more prudent to invest in the development of diagnostic technologies for detecting cancer growths, as well as the properties of cells that are destined to metastasize.
When the front-line treatment for solid tumors is still chemotherapy (cytotoxic or targeted) and radiation, and the best that blockbuster drugs can achieve is to prolong the inevitable by either a few months or not at all, then it's surely time to look outside the box.
Today, we have the ability to take a cancer specimen, analyze it, and follow those genetic changes that influence particular pathways, then use two, three, four or more targeted therapies, perhaps simultaneously, and be able to completely interrupt the flow of the cancer process.
A number of cell-based assay labs across the country have data from tens of thousands of fresh human tumor specimens, representing virtually all types of human solid and hematologic neoplasms. They have the database necessary to define sensitivity and resistance for virtually all of the currently available drugs in virtually all types of human solid and hematologic neoplasms.
Literature Citation:
Eur J Clin Invest 37 (suppl. 1):60, 2007 Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2006 ASCO Annual Meeting Proceedings Part I. Vol 24, No. 18S (June 20 Supplement), 2006: 17117
"Cure: Scientific, Social, and Organizational Requirements for the Specific Cure of Cancer" A. Glazier, et al. 2005
George L. Gabor Miklos, Ph.D., Philip J. Baird, M.D., Ph.d., "Curing Cancer: Running on Vapor," May 1, 2007 edition of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
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