Print“This comes at a great time, because genomic medicine is becoming a reality.”
The National Cancer Institute is making available a database of the genetic variation of cancer—the largest of its kind—to help researchers understand how to better tailor drugs to treat specific forms of the disease.
The NCI says that opening the data to researchers will expand the knowledge and understanding of how normal cells are transformed into cancer.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute conducted whole-exome sequencing of a collection of 60 human cancer cell lines to create a comprehensive list of cancer-specific genetic variations. The work is an extension of the program that began with combination drug screening in those same 60 cell lines. Preliminary studies indicate that the data set has the potential to dramatically enhance understanding of the relationships between specific cancer-related genetic variations and drug response, which will accelerate the drug development process, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
“This comes at a great time, because genomic medicine is becoming a reality,” says Yves Pommier, chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology at the NCI. “I am very hopeful this valuable information will change the way we use drugs for precision medicine.”
The database contains 6 billion data points that connect drugs with genomic variants across cell lines from nine tissues of origin, including breast, ovary, prostate, colon, lung, kidney, brain, blood and skin, Pommier says.
The researchers cataloged the coding variants for the entire human genome and then categorized them as either variants found in the normal population or variants that are cancer-specific. The researchers then used an algorithm to predict the sensitivity of cells harboring cancer specific variants to 103 cancer drugs approved by the FDA and an additional 207 investigational new drugs.
By studying the correlations between key cancer-related genes and cancer drugs, the researchers were able to predict the outcome. The data generated in the study, they say, provide the means to identify new determinants of response and mechanisms of resistance to drugs, and offer opportunities to target genomic defects and overcome acquired resistance.
July 17, 2013
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-national_cancer_institute_opens_database_of_genetic_variation_of_cancer.html
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