Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), for the first time, using new DNA sequencing technology, can identify the unique genetic mutations of a cancerous tumor of an individual patient. This new, more rapid and efficient approach may dramatically improve therapeutic decisions for cancer patients.

The researchers obtained the genetic sequences of all of the expressed genes in tumors from four patients with mesothelioma, an asbestos caused cancer of the lung. Three to four novel genetic mutations were found in each tumor, none of which had been implicated in cancer in previous studies. Each tumor had a unique mutation profile, similar to having a unique fingerprint. The research results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings confirmed the accuracy of advanced new sequencing technology to identify the patient-specific genetic mutations in surgically removed tumor tissue and suggest that this approach could become a new standard for discovery of tumor mutations that underlie cancer. This approach points the way to individualized analysis of patient tumors thereby encouraging discoveries that have tremendous potential to highly refine individual patient care and guide therapy.

The BWH group developed new methods to preserve and select the optimal tissue from newly harvested tumors, and software tools to manage the billions of DNA sequence data points and discovered the important cancer causing genetic changes. This newly developed pipeline could be used to identify the genetic mutations in a given patient within a relatively short time frame, from a several weeks to just a few months.

Release date: February 25, 2008
Source: Brigham and Women’s Hospital