Mar 14, 2011 08:53 GMT  ·  By
CSHL experts create new research method for studying the evolution of cancer tumors
   CSHL experts create new research method for studying the evolution of cancer tumors

Researchers in the United States announce the development of a new method for analyzing the evolution of cancer tumors. The team says that the technique could enable a better understanding of the condition. Ultimately, this could lead to the creation of new drugs and therapies.

The work was carried out at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). Scientists here determined that tumors may in fact not evolve gradually, but rather in staccato-like, short bursts.

Findings such as this will in the near future allow oncologists to figure out how the process of tumor growth and metastasis works. Once they now that, they will also be able to create ways of disrupting it, essentially destroying the tumors.

The new approach, called single cell sequencing (SNS), was developed by CSHL professor Michael Wigler and his group. The method only requires a single cancer cells to work, the experts say.

SNS allows the accurate quantification of genomic copy numbers within a single cellular nucleus. This is in essence a measure of the amount of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in that nucleus.

The reason why this is important is because, in cancer tumors, previous studies discovered that some portions of the genome are literally amplified or deleted, a fact that plays a significant role in the development of cancer within the human body.

This genetic tweaking allows key genes to receive either extra or insufficient copies, depending on what the tumor cell needs. Depriving the cancer of this ability could kill it, and save many people.

In this research, “we demonstrated that we can obtain accurate and high-resolution copy number profiles by sequencing a single cell from a cancerous tumor,” Wigler explains.

It was also proven “that by examining multiple cells from the same cancer, we can make inferences about how the cancer evolved and spread,” the expert and his team write in a paper appearing in the March 11 issue of the esteemed scientific journal Nature.

“We want to learn how a metastasis grows, and we now have the ability to do that at a very detailed level,” adds CSHL research professor James Hicks.

“In a typical blood draw taken from a cancer patient, you will typically see between five and 20 circulating tumor cells, a mark of metastasis. We’ll be able to look at every one of them and see if, for example, there’s a new clone that is different from the cell populations in the primary tumor,” he adds.

“By working at a granular level, cell by cell, we can look deeply into a metastasis and see how it got built,” Hicks concludes.