Nature Genetics: To treat childhood leukemia, scientists map mutation roadmap

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common type of childhood cancer

Co-corresponding author Dr.

Create a roadmap to understand ALL

At St.

If researchers understand the impact of genetic differences on cancer outcomes, in the future, doctors could sequence patients' cancer samples before treatment begins, and then personalize patients based on their genetics and likelihood of responding to different anticancer therapies chemical treatment

The scale of the study is unprecedented because it collected samples from 2,574 pediatric ALL patients, the largest cohort study of its type published to date

After whole-genome, whole-exome or transcriptome sequencing of cancer samples, the researchers compared the sequences to discover patterns of mutations

"This study demonstrates the power of data," said co-corresponding author Jinghui Zhang, PhD, chair of the St.

"The new driver includes a protein modification, which is really exciting because this group of proteins has never been expected to be involved in leukemia pathogenesis in the past," she said

A series of interesting results

Led by co-first authors Sam Brady, PhD, and Kathryn Roberts, PhD, the St.

Overall, the team identified 376 significantly mutated genes, 70 of which were never associated with ALL

The researchers also identified mutational differences in ALL subtypes that could impact clinical care

ALL development begins with a "big bang" of chromosomes

This work revealed the sequence of mutational events in many ALL cases, with potential therapeutic implications

The researchers traced the sequence of events leading to the occurrence of hyperdiploid ALL by computational modeling of mutation sequences and chromosomally obtained data

Original text retrieval

Brady, SW, Roberts, KG, Gu, Z.