Genetic Mutation can be defined as , Changes in the nucleotide sequence of the genetic material (i.e. DNA, or RNA, in the case of viruses), which are usually caused by copying errors during replication that further lead to base substitution, insertion, or deletion of one or more base pairs.
The team, which included more than 40 people from the BC Cancer Agency and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, discovered that a single genetic mutation is responsible for granulosa cell tumours, a rare and often untreatable form of ovarian cancer.
The discovery is akin to finding a needle in a haystack, as there are three billion components to the genetic code of the tumour.
But the research, published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, can be applied to more than ovarian cancer.
State-of-the-art technology used to identify the single mutation in ovarian cancer's DNA can also be used to unravel the genetic sequences of other cancers.
"What we can do is completely decode cancers," said Dr. David Huntsman, a genetic pathologist at the BC Cancer Agency, Vancouver General Hospital and the University of B.C.
"This would have been completely unfathomable two years ago. If you had suggested doing it, people would have looked at you like you had said you were going to fly to the moon without a rocket."
Huntsman said the ability to decode the genetic sequences of specific cancers will be part of a road map to truly personalized medicine, in which doctors will be able to come up with an individualized "recipe" for every patient.
"At some point we have to start recognizing that every patient is different in the way they respond not only to their disease, but the way they respond to and handle the treatment," Huntsman said.
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