Many cancers result from chromosomal translocations in tumor cells. Hundreds of cancer-causing translocations have been discovered, but current methods for detecting them have significant shortcomings.
The technique, developed in the lab of Stephen Lessnick, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Children's Cancer Research at HCI, combines microarray technology, which can look for thousands of translocations in a single test, with a novel antibody that is used to detect the presence of the translocation.
"We're moving past the age when a pathologist looking through the microscope at a tumor sample is the best way to diagnose what type of cancer it is," said Lessnick. "The molecular tests currently available are slow, inefficient, and expensive, and one of the biggest issues is that you need high-quality tumor samples, not always available in the clinical setting, to do them." According to Lessnick, his method tolerates real-life specimens much better than the current standard techniques.
"Originally, this method was used in HCI's Cairns lab (headed by Bradley R. Cairns, Ph.D.) to study RNA in yeast. We took their method and applied it to our study of chromosomal translocations in human tissue," Lessnick said. He said the next task is to find a commercial partner to develop this research from a 'proof of principle' into a diagnostic test that doctors can use to help their patients.
"With this method, there's potential to develop a single array that could test for every known cancer-causing translocation simultaneously. Currently, a clinician has to decide beforehand which specific cancer to test," he said.The research used Ewing's sarcoma (a rare childhood cancer) as the case study for developing the method, but Lessnick maintains that the technology can be easily applied to any type of cancer caused by a translocation.
Lessnick is a Jon and Karen Huntsman Presidential Professor in Cancer Research, and a professor in the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the University of Utah. Other HCI investigators participating in the research include Bradley R. Cairns, Ph.D., HCI Senior Director of Basic Science, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and professor in the Department of Oncological Sciences at the University of Utah, as well as Brett Milash, Ph.D., and Brian Dalley, Ph.D., of the Microarray and Genomic Analysis Core Facility.This work was supported by the NIH via R21 CA138295 to SLL, T32 GM007464 to ND, and P30 CA042014 to Huntsman Cancer Institute. Cairns is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Additional work in the Lessnick lab is supported by Sidney's Incredible Defeat of Ewing's Sarcoma (SIDES).
Linda Aagard | EurekAlert!
What happens in the cell nucleus after fertilization
06.12.2016 | Helmholtz Zentrum München - Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Gesundheit und Umwelt
Researchers uncover protein-based “cancer signature”
05.12.2016 | Universität Basel
In recent years, lasers with ultrashort pulses (USP) down to the femtosecond range have become established on an industrial scale. They could advance some applications with the much-lauded “cold ablation” – if that meant they would then achieve more throughput. A new generation of process engineering that will address this issue in particular will be discussed at the “4th UKP Workshop – Ultrafast Laser Technology” in April 2017.
Even back in the 1990s, scientists were comparing materials processing with nanosecond, picosecond and femtosesecond pulses. The result was surprising:...
Have you ever wondered how you see the world? Vision is about photons of light, which are packets of energy, interacting with the atoms or molecules in what...
A multi-institutional research collaboration has created a novel approach for fabricating three-dimensional micro-optics through the shape-defined formation of porous silicon (PSi), with broad impacts in integrated optoelectronics, imaging, and photovoltaics.
Working with colleagues at Stanford and The Dow Chemical Company, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign fabricated 3-D birefringent...
In experiments with magnetic atoms conducted at extremely low temperatures, scientists have demonstrated a unique phase of matter: The atoms form a new type of quantum liquid or quantum droplet state. These so called quantum droplets may preserve their form in absence of external confinement because of quantum effects. The joint team of experimental physicists from Innsbruck and theoretical physicists from Hannover report on their findings in the journal Physical Review X.
“Our Quantum droplets are in the gas phase but they still drop like a rock,” explains experimental physicist Francesca Ferlaino when talking about the...
The Max Planck Institute for Physics (MPP) is opening up a new research field. A workshop from November 21 - 22, 2016 will mark the start of activities for an innovative axion experiment. Axions are still only purely hypothetical particles. Their detection could solve two fundamental problems in particle physics: What dark matter consists of and why it has not yet been possible to directly observe a CP violation for the strong interaction.
The “MADMAX” project is the MPP’s commitment to axion research. Axions are so far only a theoretical prediction and are difficult to detect: on the one hand,...
16.11.2016 | Event News
01.11.2016 | Event News
14.10.2016 | Event News
06.12.2016 | Materials Sciences
06.12.2016 | Medical Engineering
06.12.2016 | Power and Electrical Engineering