A study conducted by Columbia University (USA), with the participation of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), from Hospitalet de Llobregat (northeast Spain) and the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO), identified key cancer vulnerabilities through Big Data Analysis to 10,000 tumors.
IDIBELL explained on Tuesday that the results obtained, published in the scientific journal “Cell”, have the potential to improve the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
The researchers analyzed, using computational algorithms, the genomic data of 10,000 tumors from the most common 20 cancers in order to “identify the regulatory proteins responsible for channeling information from genomic changes and their transformation into cancer transcriptional identity.” .
Thus, they identified up to 112 tumor subtypes defined by 407 of these regulatory proteins that channel information.
In addition, the analysis showed that the 112 tumor subtypes can be classified based on the degree of activation or inactivation of only 24 groups of regulatory proteins, or what is the same, the combination of 24 fundamental characteristics of cancer.
Knowing the fundamental characteristics of a specific cancer can help to make a very reliable prognosis of the patient’s prognosis.
The researchers validated some of the fundamental features described in prostate or kidney cancers, among others, and using gene editing techniques and pharmacological treatments showed that predictions made by algorithms were met in studies with experimental models.