Johns Hopkins gene hunters pinpoint new cancer g...( that spark a normal cell to grow uncon...)

"We envision future cancer therapy as personalized, based on gene mutations in each patient's tumor," says Velculescu. "This kind of information, gleaned from sequencing a patient's tumor, means drugs could be targeted to just the right molecular pathway at just the right time and potentially be more effective with fewer side effects."

Most of the PIK3CA mutations described in the current paper are located in two DNA cancer "hot spots," thus making molecular diagnostic tests possibly easier to develop. "These mutations, added to a panel of existing markers for colon cancer developed in our laboratory, could help find cancers that would otherwise go undetected," says Yardena Samuels, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow and first author of the study.

The researchers are now looking more closely at the role of PIK3CA in tumor development and are working on identifying compounds that could target tumors with mutations in this gene.

This research was funded by the Ludwig Trust, the Benjamin Baker Scholarship Fund, the EMBO Fellowship Fund and grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Other participants of this research include Zhenghe Wang, Alberto Bardelli, Natalie Silliman, Janine Ptak, Steve Szabo, Gregory J. Riggins, Kenneth W. Kinzler and Bert Vogelstein of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Hai Yan of Duke University Medical Center; Adi Gazdar of UT Southwestern Medical Center; Steven M. Powell of the University of Virginia Health System; and James K.V. Willson and Sanford Markowitz of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Ireland Cancer Center, University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Western University.

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Contact: Vanessa Wasta
wastava@jhmi.edu
410-955-1287
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
11-Mar-2004