Russian Researchers Develop “Genome Navigator” to Fight Colorectal Cancer
The new technology could help develop more effective treatments for the disease.
Specialists at Central University have developed a “genome navigator” designed to help fight colorectal cancer. It is a computational method that can identify within hours the genes that cancer cells use to support their growth.
According to the researchers, the development could become an important step toward creating more effective treatments for colorectal cancer, one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide.
The new method combines three independent types of biological data describing the origin and nature of a tumor: physical interactions between long non-coding RNA and DNA, markers of gene activity, and the locations of so-called super-enhancers. By analyzing these signals, the algorithm identifies regions of DNA that could represent potential vulnerabilities in cancer cells.
When the algorithm was applied to colorectal cancer cell data, the researchers narrowed thousands of possible candidates down to a shortlist of 12 promising target genes. All of these genes show higher activity in patients’ tumors than in healthy tissue.
