Genes Linked To Cancer Prognosis Identified, Will This Be A Medical Breakthrough?

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death. Experts have been trying to detect this type of disease before it is too late. Now, a breakthrough research identifies a genetic signature linked to cancer prognosis.

A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge under the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cancer Unit identified a genetic signature relevant to metabolism associated with weak patient prognosis. For them to identify the genetic signature, experts analyzed 8,161 tissue samples and they claim that result of their analysis could help the future doctors decide on how to treat patients and aid them to develop new treatments.

Example, for cancer cells to grow and spread, they go through a complex metabolic transformation, which allows the cells to link an energy that grants cancer to escalate. As follows, researchers want to increase their understanding of the gene that underpins the changes to the metabolic pathways. If so, it will give scientists further insights in cancer spreading through the body, in a report by Science Mag. 

To know more about the gene, program leader Dr. Christian Frezza together with his Ph.D. student Edoardo Gaude from the MRC, study and test the different expressions of metabolic genes composed of 20 different solid cancer types from 8,161 tumors and non-cancerous samples from the Cancer Genome Atlas.

In the study, experts discovered that the genes related to a metabolic pathway in the mitochondria called "OXPHOS pathway" that is responsible for providing energy to the cell were significantly down, regulated in the tumor from patients that have a poor clinical outcome. The researchers added that the suppression of OXPHOS genes is linked to metastasis, in which allows cancer to spread further in other parts of the body and links to even lower prognosis, according to Medical Xpress.

However, experts said that the link between the OXPHOS genes and cancer survival found only to be an association at this stage. Thus, the study shares that mitochondrial function might give an important role in patient prognosis.

In addition, Dr Christian Frezza said: "Cellular metabolism is known to be a key part of cancer progression. In our work, we used data on the patient's prognosis to identify a genetic signature related to metabolism that correlated with poor clinical outcome. Using this information, it could be possible in the future to tailor treatments specific to patients."