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NYTimes.com
"Another finding was that many endometrial cancers had a mutation in a gene that had been seen before only in colon cancers. The mutation disables a system for repairing DNA damage, resulting in 100 times more mutations than typically occur in cancer cells....."
"....Jeff Boyd, executive director of the Cancer Genome Institute at Fox Chase Cancer Center, who was not involved with the new research, said the similarity among breast, ovarian and endometrial tumors was the best example yet of the idea that cancers are more usefully classified by their gene mutations than by where they originate. Though many scientists believe this view is correct, Dr. Boyd said, “It is very rewarding — I can’t overstate it” to see it validated with real data......
The Effectiveness of Metabolomic Analysis
ReplyDeleteAccording to Dr. Robert A. Nagourney of Rational Therapeutics, cancer therapists have long sought mechanisms to match patients to available therapies. Current fashion revolves around DNA mutations, gene copy and rearrangements to select drugs. While every cancer patient may be as unique as their fingerprints, all of the fingerprints on file with the federal automated fingerprint identification system database doesn't add up to a hill of genes (pun intended), if you can't connect them to the criminal.
According to J. Michael Bishop of the University of California, San Francisco, cancer research is dominated now by genomics and the hope that genetic fingerprints will allow us to guide therapy. The issue is whether that is sufficient. They argue that it isn't because metabolic changes are complex and hard to predict. You may need to have the metabolome as well as the genome. Metabolic profiling will be essential for defining each cancer and choosing the best treatment accordingly, researchers say.
Just as a cancer genome refers to the complete set of genes, the metabolome refers to the complete set of metabolites in a given tumor. The altered metabolism of tumors has been considered a target for anticancer therapy.
According to laboratory oncologists, much like genomics aims to unravel the structure of the genome, metabolomics focuses on understanding the many small molecule metabolites that result from a cell's metabolic processes.
There are an estimated 5,000 - 20,000 endogenous human metabolites, and analysing their production gives an accurate picture of the physiology of a cell at a given moment in time.
Whereas the cell’s genotype can predict its physiology to a limited extent, metabolomics also takes phenotype – and therefore environmental conditions – into account, allowing a more precise measure of actual cell physiology.
For research, the study of metabolomics provides the means to measure the effects of a variety of stimuli on individual cells, tissues, and bodily fluids.
By studying how their metabolic profiles change with the introduction of chemicals or the expression of known genes, for example, researchers can more effectively study the immediate impact of disease, nutrition, pharmaceutical treatment, and genetic modifications while using a systems biology approach.
There are many reasons why cancer cures remain out of reach, but several changes could be implemented immediately to increase the rate of success. One of them is the need to redouble the efforts in the study of basic metabolism and the growing field of metabolomics (the metabolome).