Mutational signatures in DNA explain genetic development, history of cancers in patie

[News]

Researchers have provided the first comprehensive compendium of mutational processes that drive tumour development. Together, these mutational processes explain most mutations found in 30 of the most common cancer types. This new understanding of cancer development could help to treat and prevent a wide-range of cancers.

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[gdpawel]

The situation is that splice variants, duplications, mutations, SNPs, non-coding DNA, siRNAs and a wealth of downstream events, make an interpretation of genomic data highly problematic. The fact that a laboratory can identify a gene does not confer a certainty that the gene or mutation or splice variant will confer an outcome. The input of possibilities overwhelms the capacity of the test to rule in or out the answer. Some of the tumor promotion signals in the form of siRNAs may arise not from the cancer cells, but instead from the surrounding stroma. How will then, even the most perfect genomic analyses of cancer cells play out in the real world of human tumor biology and clinical response prediction?