Researchers Decode The Evolution Of Ovarian And Skin Cancer Cells
A research team from the University of California in San Francisco has managed to decode the evolution of human ovarian and cancerous cells. The team was able to discover the sequence in which genetic mutations occur in these cells as they change from their normal cell states to malignant and invasive cell masses.
The results of this research may provide doctors with new methods of designing diagnostic procedures that will allow for the detection of the early signs of cancer. This is a significant breakthrough because almost all cancers are considerably more treatable in their early stages.
The methods used by the research scientists depend on the stimulation of regions of the DNA of the cancerous cells. This is akin to 'genetic archaeology'. In the same way that archaeologists able to determine the age of the objects by observing the age of the objects surrounding them, this new method also allows researchers to closely examine the DNA of cancerous cells and thus determine the mutations that came first by observing the genetic material in its vicinity.
The dermatologist, Raymond Cho, MD, PHD said that it is possible to determine which mutations came first and which mutations came later on. The doctor and his colleagues from the UCSF were able to develop the method in conjunction with other scientists and researchers headed by Joe Gray and Paul Spellman from the Oregon Health and Science University, other scientists for the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology and Elizabeth Purdom from the University of California. The findings from this research were published in the 'Journal Cancer Discovery'.
Cancer often occurs as a direct result of mutations in the DNA present within all cells, the causes of these mutations are many and varied. After a period of time, these mutations will begin to switch off some genes and increase the production of other genes, this result in the abnormal spread and growth of the affected cells including the other signs of cancer.
Dr Cho and his other colleagues were very keen to discover the order in which mutations occur within cancerous cells. Dr Cho then set out to find a way o separating the mutations using the knowledge that long DNA pieces abnormally double in their number. This method is reliant upon the determination of the DNA sequence within the cancer cells in order to observe which other mutations have also doubled in number, thus showing that they happened before duplication.