Cancer has had a terrible impact on millions of people’s lives. It’s a horrid disease, and sadly most of the treatment is just a money scheme. However, scientists might have just changed the entire treatment.
There are endless ways that a person can develop cancer these days. Scientists have studied and studied the genetic cells of cancer and ways to treat them, detect them, and prevent them from growing. A new study published in the Journal ‘Cell’, researchers identified a new way to detect cancer.
Researchers identified 760 different genes that cancer cells need to survive and multiply. The researchers translated this information into a map that tracks what cancer cells depend on to grow. Though not finished yet, the authors hope it will help show others where to start.
“We have a lot of information from cancer genome sequencing, but this effort focuses on the function of genes,” says William Hahn, a researcher at the Broad Institute cancer program and lead author of the study. “It hasn’t been done before because we have not had the technology to perform experiments at this scale.”
Hahn and his team have identified a few characteristics of cancer as a whole. 10 percent of cancer gene cells rely upon and exist in multiple cancer types, meaning that the method to target those pathways could be used against many different types of cancer.
He says that there are many new different ways the new ‘dependency map’ can be used to find a new treatment. He says, “One way is that we find a gene or target that is necessary for the survival of a specific type of tumor that was not revealed by genome sequencing.” Another, he says, is by finding routes to repurpose drugs for one type of cancer to treat another. And finally, he says, “this will provide a roadmap for what drugs still need to be developed.”
Cancer treatment’s 21’st century shift lies here in this research study. We are well aware that chemotherapy is out of date and toxic to humans. This is the first step to finding a cure and treatment that is actually worth anything.