The following is an excerpt.
ST. LOUIS – Doctors can now view patients’ leukemia from the equivalent of a helicopter instead of an airplane with new DNA sequencing of cancer cells, an analogy described by Richard Wilson, director of Washington University’s Genome Institute.
The researchers led by Washington University studied the genetic profiles and mutations of 200 patients in St. Louis with acute myeloid leukemia, a blood cancer that can spread fast and is difficult to treat.
An average of 13 mutated genes were found in each patient’s cancer cells, which could give doctors a road map for how aggressive a patient’s cancer is and which drug might work best. As genetic coding becomes more accessible to cancer treatment centers, each patient could be tested for hundreds of dollars. Ideally, the coding could help doctors predict which patients would benefit from risky and expensive bone marrow transplants.
View the original article here: Improved DNA sequencing helps leukemia treatments
