The podcast of This American life that aired this past weekend offered an interesting glimpse into the world of cancer research. A pair of researchers, one a professor at Thomas Jefferson University and the other a music teacher, were studying whether pulsing sound waves could selectively kill cancer cells. The collaboration started off great but things started to go down hill.
One of the things that was interesting to see was how beginning researchers often get excited by preliminary data and think they’ve hit the jackpot. They don’t realize how critical the controls are. Nor do they realize how much effort it takes to reproduce and validate the experimental results. I have to admit the tedious work involved in validating results is part of what drove me out of the lab.
Tag: cancer (page 2 of 4)
I’m late with this update, but last month BRCA genes, which are linked to increased risk for breast and ovarian cancers, were ruled patentable for the second time. The decision will likely be appealed. From Science:
In today’s opinion, CAFC rules that Myriad’s patents on the genes themselves are valid “because each of the claimed molecules represents a nonnaturally occurring composition of matter.” This reasoning assumes that the patents are based on “nonnatural” segments of DNA extracted from cells, not DNA as it occurs in the nucleus. The court also rules that a method of screening for potential cancer therapeutics by tracking their effects on cell growth rates is patentable, contrary to the view of a lower court. But CAFC finds invalid the company’s claims on testing for cancer risk by comparing or analyzing DNA sequences because these methods are based on “abstract, mental steps” of logic that are not “transformative.”
One of the three deciding judges, William Bryson, dissents in part from the majority opinion, arguing that Myriad’s claims to the BRCA gene and gene fragments are not valid. He writes that he feared that if the majority opinion stands, it “will likely have broad consequences, such as preempting methods for whole-genome sequencing.”
The decision is not likely to fully satisfy either of the battling parties, although some biotech companies may be relieved to learn that the court did not wipe out any gene patents.
Myriad has not responded to an e-mail query about what it planned to do next. Attorney Daniel Ravicher of PUBPAT, who has led the legal battle against the BRCA patents, responds that his group has not “made any final decisions about what we’ll do. … But we are not satisfied with this result, and think the dissenting judge in the Court of Appeals decision today is correct that isolated human genes are not patentable.”
Exciting news from the New York Times regarding drug treatments for certain lung cancers:
The first large and comprehensive study of the genetics of a common lung cancer has found that more than half the tumors from that cancer have mutations that might be treated by new drugs that are already in the pipeline or that could be easily developed.
For the tens of thousands of Americans with that cancer — squamous cell lung cancer — the results are promising because they could foretell a new type of treatment in which drugs are tailored to match the genetic abnormality in each patient, researchers say.
“This is a disease where there are no targeted therapies,” said Dr. Matthew Meyerson of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, referring to modern drugs that attack genetic abnormalities. He is a lead author of a paper on the study, with more than 300 authors, which was published online in the journal Nature on Sunday.
“What we found will change the landscape for squamous cell carcinoma,” Dr. Meyerson said. “I think it gives hope to patients.”
The study is part of the Cancer Genome Atlas, a large project by the National Institutes of Healthto examine genetic abnormalities in cancer.
Read the original Nature paper here.