Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have identified a specific class of biomarkers that can tell a lot about how aggressive a patient’s cancer will be.
“There are undoubtedly dozens or hundreds of mutations that cause cancer, and that can be found in almost any tumor,” said CSHL Fellow Jason Sheltzer, Ph.D. “That’s why it was surprising to discover that these mutations are pretty evenly distributed in early-stage benign cancer as well as in the really aggressive, highly-malignant cancers.”
In other words, the mutations that cause cancer don’t actually tell you all that much about who will end up surviving and who will end up dying from cancer.
That’s why Dr. Sheltzer set out to find other easily identifiable factors that can determine a cancer patient’s prognosis. According to a paper (“Systematic identification of mutations and copy number alterations associated with Cancer Patient Prognosis”) published in eLife, his team not only traced each patient’s outcome—whether it be recovery or tragedy—but also took a closer look at genetic sites commonly associated with cancer-causing mutations.
Source: genengnews