A team of Canadian researchers has decoded the genetic structure of metastatic lobular breast cancer – a major breakthough that could lead to the development of new treatments and therapies for that type of breast cancer.

Scientists with the BC Cancer Agency in British Columbia unlocked all 3 billion letters in the cancer’s DNA sequence and identified all of the mutations that caused the cancer to spread. Metastatic lobular breast cancer accounts for about 10 percent of all breast cancer.

“One in nine women is expected to develop breast cancer, and breast cancer accounts for 29 percent of all cancer diagnoses for B.C. women,” said Health Services Minister Kevin Falcon. “As a result of the efforts of the scientists behind the study, this breakthrough finding gives further hope to the thousands of women with this terrible disease.”

The researchers used the latest DNA sequencing technology to compare a single patient’s lobular breast cancer tumor at two different times – when the cancer first presented itself and when it came back nine years later. They found 32 mutations in the tumor and compared that to the original tumor’s DNA. Only five were present in all of the cells from the original tumor, indicating that those mutations likely caused the disease.

Marco Marra, director of the BC Cancer Agency’s Genome Sciences Centre, said the project largely was made possible by advances in DNA sequencing technology. The project that first decoded the human genome took years, while this study was conducted in a matter of weeks.

Katie Hoadley, a research associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, said the Canadian research represents the new wave of cancer genetic research. The Canadian researchers examined the complete genetic structure from every possible angle, something that had not been done before. In past genetic studies, researchers would look at portions of the genetic code.

And this study was particularly interesting because the researchers were able to examine the genetic structure of a tumor at two different points in its evolution, providing some insight into what was going on within the tumor to cause the cancer and to cause its to return, said Hoadley.

But, she said, the research is not a definitive answer to curing breast cancer. Rather, the study provides a guide for researchers to follow to better understand the causes and possible treatments for lobular breast cancer. Other breast cancers still need to be studied.

The study will be published in the Thursday issue of the journal Nature.

UNC, DUKE ALSO STUDYING CANCER GENETICS

Similar research is being conducted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center and the National Cancer Institute have discovered a genetic alteration – in this case, a second copy of an entire gene – that is a cause of familial chrodoma, an uncommon form of bone cancer.

“This alteration is unlike anything we have ever seen before in families that tend to develop the same kind of cancers,” says Michael Kelley, an associate professor at Duke University Medical Center. “We are not talking about a mutation in a single gene, but the duplication of an entire gene. This discovery is a classic example of where science answers one question but raises many, many more.”

Chrodoma is a rare, but severe disease, affecting only one in every million people. The disease causes tumors at the base of the skull, pelvis or along the spinal column. There is no cure and few treatments, and Chrodoma usually causes death within 10 years.

Researchers at UNC, including Hoadley, were selected to participate in the Cancer Genome Atlas project, an initiative created by the National Cancer Institute and the National Human Genome Research Institute to characterize genomic changes that occur in cancer. UNC is one of 12 centers nationally working on the project.

“This project represents one of the most ambitious and challenging human genetics efforts to date, only rivaled by its predecessor, the Human Genome Project,” said Dr. Charles Perou, associate professor of genetics and pathology and laboratory medicine. “The TCGA project takes a comprehensive approach to the study of human cancers and applies multiple cutting-edge technologies to the same large set of tumors. The real power of this project is in the integration of these different genetic data types into a common framework that should provide a much more complete picture of why a tumor is a tumor.”

DNAWellnessinfo.com Resource:  http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2009/10/05/daily42.html

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