- A new study focused on decoding the genetic chaos found in cancer cells is on 
the cover of the June issue of the scientific journal Nature.

- This work reveals novel biomarkers with the potential to improve the 
development of precision therapies and treatment selection for the deadliest 
types of cancer.

Researchers at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and the Spanish 
National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) have developed a method to understand 
the genetic chaos observed in the most lethal types of cancer. This information 
can be used to design more effective precision therapies as well as improve 
treatment selection for patients. The study is on the cover of the June issue 
of Nature, one of the world’s leading scientific journals. The approach 
described in the paper detects patterns of large DNA alterations in tumor 
genomes that help make sense of the mutational processes underlying cancer 
development. A better understanding of the genomic identity of aggressive 
cancers can lead to improved treatment selection and the development of more 
effective therapies, which has been virtually impossible for these cancer types 
to date. 

The research was jointy led by Florian Markowetz, Senior Group Leader at the 
Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and Geoff Macintyre, Head of the 
Computational Oncology Group at the CNIO. CRUK researcher Ruben Drews and CNIO 
researcher Barbara Hernando, also took part in the study, along with scientists 
from British, Canadian, Belgian and German research centres.

The study investigated chromosomal instability – a distinctive feature of 
aggressive human cancers. Under normal conditions, a healthy cell will 
perfectly duplicate and divide, to form two identical daughter cells. Each 
daughter cell will contain the same number of chromosomes as their parent cell, 
with the exact same DNA sequence. In cancer cells, however, this duplication 
does not occur perfectly. 

The team that carried out the study have also established a UK-based precision 
medicine start-up, Tailor Bio. The company has licensed a patent on the method 
described in the paper published in Nature, and obtained another patent based 
on previous work on the same subject. The team hope their findings will soon be 
translated to the clinic.

Reference article: A pan-cancer compendium of chromosomal instability. Ruben M. 
Drews et al. (Nature 2022) DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04789-9 
(https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04789-9)

SOURCE: CNIO Centro Nacional de Investiganion Oncologica