Can Your Chance of Surviving Cancer Be Hidden in Your DNA?
New research suggests that the chance of survival of a cancer patient is hidden in their DNA. Predicting the survival chance of cancer patients accurately has been a great challenge for the medical community for a very long time. Over the years, several studies were conducted in an effort to find a reliable method that enables doctor to approximate a patient's survival chance depending on the type of cancer they have. However the predictions have still failed to be reliable despite the effort.
The new study offers a database that is composed of data from 18,000 cancer sufferers who had the gene expression patterns of 39 different types of the illness, Daily Mail reported. A database with such great spectrum was a promising means of enabling researchers to pick up certain patterns associated with good or poor prognosis.
The huge database is called PRECOG, which stands for 'prediction of cancer outcomes from genetic profiles,' will be able to looked into by doctors and researchers of the field.
Dr. Ash Alizadeh, one of the authors of the study from Stanford University School of Medicine said that the data from 18,000 cancer patients really helped them to spot patterns. "The patterns were very striking, especially because few such examples are currently available for the use of genes or immune cells for cancer prognosis."
During the study a specific gene called FOXM1 drew the attention of the researchers. They noted that they discovered FOXM1 was associated with the growth of cancer cells and unfortunately would bring a poor prognosis for the cancer patients. On the other hand, another gene called KLRB1 was found to be protective against cancerous cell growth by encouraging body's immune system to fight back, Daily Mail reported.
Researchers believe that the information huge database provides might aid in determining the most appropriate treatment for cancer. Furthermore, it is also said that the gene expression patterns might help discovering the mechanism of uncontrolled cell growth, the fundamental cause of cancer, reported by Daily Mail.
