UNSW. Australia: A study that has sequenced 100 pancreatic cancer genomes for the
first time provides a new understanding of the disease’s origin and may
help guide future patient treatment.
The findings are published in the journal Nature. UNSW conjoint Professor Andrew Biankin, from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, and Professor Sean Grimmond, from the University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience, led the study.
Using
whole genome sequencing, the analysis revealed broad patterns of
structural changes in the genome, previously invisible when it was
feasible to only sequence around 1%
Four kinds of genomic rearrangement were detected: ‘stable’, ‘locally rearranged’, ‘scattered’ and ‘unstable’.
Professor
Biankin, now based at the Wolfson Wohl Cancer Research Centre,
Scotland, says many different kinds of catastrophic events can happen in
a cancer genome and be described like geographical events.
“When
you sequence a genome, you can tell whether a volcano, earthquake or
local storm has taken place and this gives us a much clearer picture
than we’ve ever had before,” he says.
“So for example, if we’re
using a novel immunotherapy, and we don’t yet have a biomarker, we’ll
give it to all patients, and we’ll test their genomes to see which ones
respond and which don’t.”
“We’ll also have the various genome
subtypes that have come out of this study – where in some cases we can
see that mutation corresponds to a particular drug target.”
"We’ll select those patient groups and test the targeted therapy we believe should work.”
Professor Biankin plans to conduct a clinical trial in the United Kingdom for patients with pancreatic cancer.
Pancreatic
cancer has a median survival of six months and a five year survival
that remains less than 5%. There is an urgent need to find a better way
of selecting patients for current therapies and to develop new
therapeutic strategies.
Read the full Garvan media release here.