HonCode

Go Back   HER2 Support Group Forums > General Cancer News
Register Gallery FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

General Cancer News Latest Breast Cancer News from Moreover Technologies

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 09-24-2012, 05:10 AM   #1
News
Senior Member
 
News's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 18,903
Molecular similarity between one sub-type of breast cancer and ovarian cancer

A team of scientists with The Cancer Genome Atlas program reports their genetic characterization of 800 breast tumors, including finding some of the genetic causes of the most common forms of breast cancer, providing clues for new therapeutic targets, and identifying a molecular similarity between one sub-type of breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

More...
News is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-24-2012, 02:52 PM   #2
gdpawel
Senior Member
 
gdpawel's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 1,080
About the Cancer Genome Atlas

The field of genomics is caught in a data deluge, as reported by Andrew Pollack of the New York Times (DNA Sequencing Caught in Deluge of Data, December 1, 2011). DNA sequencing is becoming faster and cheaper, but the result is that the ability to determine DNA sequences is starting to outrun the ability of researchers to store, transmit and especially to analyze the data.

“Data handling is now the bottleneck,” said David Haussler, director of the center for biomolecular science and engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “It costs more to analyze a genome than to sequence a genome.”

That could delay the day when DNA sequencing is routinely used in medicine. The cost of determining a person’s complete DNA blueprint is expected to fall below $1,000, but that long-awaited threshold excludes the cost of making sense of that data, which is becoming a bigger part of the total cost.

“The real cost in the sequencing is more than just running the sequencing machine,” said Mark Gerstein, professor of biomedical informatics at Yale. “And now that is becoming more apparent.”

The lower cost, along with increasing speed, has led to a huge increase in how much sequencing data is being produced. There will probably be 30,000 human genomes sequenced by the end of this year alone, up from a handful a few years ago, according to the journal Nature.

In a few cases, human genomes are being sequenced to help diagnose mysterious rare diseases and treat patients. But most are being sequenced as part of studies. The federally financed Cancer Genome Atlas is sequencing the genomes of thousands of tumors and of healthy tissue from the same people, looking for genetic causes of cancer.

And DNA is just part of the story. To truly understand biology, researchers are gathering data on the RNA, proteins and chemicals in cells. That data can be even more voluminous than data on genes. And those different types of data have to be integrated. There are giant piles of data and no way to connect them.

There is now so much raw data that it is becoming not feasible to re-analyze it. So researchers will increasingly store just the final results. In the case of human genomes, they might store even less, only the difference between a particular genome and some reference genome.
gdpawel is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-25-2012, 11:09 AM   #3
gdpawel
Senior Member
 
gdpawel's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 1,080
Dr. Len Lichtenfeld of the American Cancer Society wrote:

“It is important to recall that despite the fact this is incredibly sophisticated and difficult work, it is still reasonably early in our ability to perform the analyses, interpret the data, and determine the best way to apply it to the clinic. We still have a long way to go, and we must always remember that cancer has a way of being more complicated at every turn that we might otherwise anticipate as our research and our knowledge advances. But research such as this also puts more of the pieces of the puzzle of breast cancer together in a way that a solution to the dilemma of understanding breast cancer and how we can apply the best treatment does appear to be more readily at hand.

What is the most important message from this research?

Unfortunately, it is not going to change lives immediately. Your doctor isn’t going to give you a different treatment for your breast cancer today, tomorrow, or next week because of this research. There is no question that doctors involved in breast cancer treatment are going to take a very careful look at this research and determine the best way to apply this information to new approaches to breast cancer as quickly as they can, but that will still take time.

To me, the most important message from this research is to confirm what many of us have been thinking for some time now: we are seeing the fruits of decades—yes, decades—of hard work in the laboratory taking us to a point we are going to have a significant impact on patient care and the outcomes of treatment for cancer. At the same time, the very support for that research is in jeopardy due to decreases in government funding, business investment, and private philanthropy.”

http://acspressroom.wordpress.com/20...ncertypes2012/
gdpawel is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-26-2012, 10:54 PM   #4
gdpawel
Senior Member
 
gdpawel's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 1,080
Young woman with breast cancer reacts to Nature study news coverage

Mandy Stahre, PhD.
Breast Cancer Survivor

I sit here rolling my eyes as I hear the latest round of news stories touting a “breakthrough” or “cure” for breast cancer based on a recent Nature article. I’m not saying research isn’t important, but the media grasps onto any sort of advancement in basic science as the next sure thing for curing cancer. For many breast cancer advocates, myself included, the information contained in the recent Nature article is not new. Many of us have been attending conferences (alongside health journalists) in the past year in which these results have been presented. Missing from the media hype is the caution that an advancement in the knowledge or basic science does not translate into a change in treatment. Treatment for breast cancer will not change today, tomorrow, and possibly won’t change at all based on the recent findings.

Clinical trials, pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, government agencies, these are just some of the players that must work together to test, approve, create, and market any sort of new treatment. It takes time, and unfortunately, reporting that new cures are just around the corner does nothing but give false hope to many cancer patients. Frankly, using the word “cure” with regards to cancer in health journalism should be a clear sign that the writer of the article doesn’t even possess a simple understanding of what it takes to develop new cancer treatments.

This recent media hype causes my cynical side to show. I can’t help it, this is what happens when you are diagnosed with cancer at a young age. October is fast approaching and with it, the “pink washing” of America. I can’t help but think the Nature study results splashed all over the media will be used as “proof” that consumers can make a difference in the fight against breast cancer, not by lobbying their congressmen to increase funding for breast cancer research, but by buying some awful Pepto Bismol-colored hand mixer. Frankly, if companies were interested in donating to help fight breast cancer, then why don’t they just donate the money anyway instead of making consumers buy a pink product? And in reality, did any pink product really help fund the current study described in Nature, probably not.

http://www.healthnewsreview.org/2012...news-coverage/
gdpawel is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 04:06 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Copyright HER2 Support Group 2007 - 2021
free webpage hit counter