Tag Archives: sanger-institute

Immune system development linked to leukaemia: Defences against infection can be weaknesses in causing cancer

Scientists have discovered a genetic signature that implicates a key mechanism in the immune system as a driving force for a type of childhood leukemia. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia or ALL is the most common form of childhood leukemia. A key factor driving this leukemia for one in four ALL patients is a mutation that causes two of their genes, ETV6 and RUNX1, to fuse together. This genomic alteration happens before birth and kick starts the disease. …

Scientists fingerprint single cancer cells to map cancer’s family tree

The technique can identify the founding mutations from which a tumour evolved and then uses computer software to draw a map of the cancer’s family tree. Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute used DNA sequencing to identify a panel of mutations present across thousands of cancer cells in three patients with leukaemia…

Cancer’s origins revealed: Genetic imprints and signatures left by DNA-damaging processes that lead to cancer identified

Each mutational process leaves a particular pattern of mutations, an imprint or signature, in the genomes of cancers it has caused. By studying 7,042 genomes of people with the most common forms of cancer, the team uncovered more than 20 signatures of processes that mutate DNA…