The PDS3 differentiation-like trait relates to tumor biology unexplained by single cell-derived iCMS. Credit: Natural genetics (2024). DOI:10.1038/s41588-024-01654-5
New research led by a team of scientists from Queen’s University Belfast and the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Scotland Institute in Glasgow has made a series of groundbreaking discoveries about tumor biology that could be used to propose an approach to medicine personalized more effective to patients suffering from intestines. (colorectal cancer.
Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK, with around 42,900 new cases of bowel cancer and around 16,600 deaths from bowel cancer in the UK each year, a statistic which highlights the need to find new ways to treat patients with this aggressive disease.
The new study published in Natural geneticsused a unique and innovative approach developed in Belfast to identify a set of novel molecular patterns in tumor tissue that provide new information relating to treatment response and risk of disease progression.
These remarkable results mean that clinicians and scientists can now derive more information from a patient’s tumor tissue, which could lead to better treatment options.
Previously, the most common approach to identifying groups of tumors based on their biological signaling, known as molecular subtyping, used information about the degree of activity of individual genes in tumor tissue.
Subtypes identified using this method have shaped the understanding of cancer development, progression, and response to treatment over the past decade and have served as the basis for numerous clinical trials and preclinical studies.
Dr Philip Dunne, Reader in Molecular Pathology at the Patrick G Johnston Cancer Research Center at Queen’s University Belfast and lead author of the study, explains: “Although looking at patterns across individual genes has revealed remarkable insights into cancer signaling, advances in laboratory research over the past decade have shown that assessing the activity of groups of closely related genes in combination can provide new understanding that is not apparent when using traditional single-gene approaches.
Given the potential value of this new approach, researchers from Queen’s University Belfast, the CRUK Scotland Institute, the University of Zurich and the University of Oxford, alongside a multinational collaborative group , proposed a new data-driven method for reclassification of bowel cancer, which was published. in this groundbreaking new study.
By assembling genes into biological pathways before the development of molecular subtypes, the team reorganized tumors into a series of new groups, based on activity across a complex network of cancer-related signaling; All of this appears to be essential in predicting how well a tumor will respond to different treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
To ensure that scientists and clinicians around the world can immediately access this data and test this new subtyping approach, the team has released a freely available classification tool that allows the Belfast-developed approach to be used on tumor samples in any research laboratory.
Dr Sudhir Malla, postdoctoral researcher at the Patrick G Johnston Cancer Research Center at Queen’s University Belfast and first author of the study, said: “By developing an unrestricted classification tool for the research community on cancer, this means that researchers around the world can replicate our findings on data from their own collections of tumor samples, to identify the biological pathways that cancer cells turn on or off to control their movement, growth and their response to their environment.
Professor Owen Sansom, director of the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute in Glasgow, co-author of the study, said: “The research presented today in Natural genetics illustrates the value of collaborative research between scientists and clinicians. Studies like this are essential for us to understand the complexities of a patient’s tumor and will be used in our preclinical laboratories to identify new treatments that specifically target the biological patterns we have identified. »
Dr Sam Godfrey, head of research information at Cancer Research UK, said: “Cancer is perhaps the most complex disease we face, and no treatment will ever beat it. »
“Research like this could lead to better and more accurate treatments for the thousands of people diagnosed with bowel cancer each year in Scotland.”
The team is now applying their new subtyping approach to tumor samples from clinical trials in the UK, to build the essential clinical evidence needed before the new method can be used to make clinical decisions about the treatments to be offered to a patient.
More information:
Sudhir B. Malla et al, Pathway-level subtyping identifies a slow-cycling biological phenotype associated with poor clinical outcomes in colorectal cancer, Natural genetics (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41588-024-01654-5
Provided by Queen’s University Belfast
Quote: Genetic research could revolutionize the way bowel cancer is treated (February 13, 2024) retrieved February 13, 2024 from
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