Cancer prevention genes reported
Wednesday November 1st, 2017
British scientists have reported 27 new genes that they believe are involved in preventing the development of cancer.
A team based at the Francis Crick Institute in London, UK, and the University of Leuven, Belgium, analysed 2, 218 tumour samples from 12 different human cancer types including breast, lung and bowel cancers.
They explain in Nature Communications yesterday (31 October) that there are two copies of tumour suppressor genes in all human cells which help protect them from turning cancerous.
The team used new computational tools to overcome previous research issues and determine the relative proportions of cancerous and healthy cells in each sample.
This revealed 96 regions of the genome that are often lost during tumour development, and showed that harmful tumour suppressor gene deletions have a different 'DNA footprint' to non-harmful deletions. Having categorised the 96 deletions, they found 16 previously known tumour suppressor genes, and 27 new ones.
Researcher Dr Jonas Demeulemeester said: "Using this powerful toolkit, we've uncovered rare tumour suppressor genes that when lost in mutated cells, cause cancer. This could pave the way for the development of personalised cancer treatments."
Co-author Peter Van Loo added: "Our study demonstrates that rare tumour suppressor genes can be identified through large-scale analysis of the number of copies of genes in cancer samples. Cancer genomics is a growing area of research, and the computational tools we use are a powerful way to find new genes involved in cancer."
Next the team will investigate the new candidate tumour suppressor genes further, in an attempt to find drug targets.
Cheng, J. et al. Pan-cancer analysis of homozygous deletions in primary tumours uncovers rare tumour suppressors. Nature Communications 31 October 2017; doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-01355-0 [abstract]
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