A study conducted by the Institute Welcome Sanger, in the United Kingdom and published in the magazine Science, has managed to decipher which mutations occur in a healthy bladder before cancer begins.
Cancer occurs when somatic mutations (mutations that occur naturally in cells) affect cancer genes and allow mutated cells to multiply faster than healthy cells. This is how mutated cells gain the upper hand over healthy cells, leading to the development of diseases like cancer.
Numerous studies have been conducted to learn more about the mechanisms of cancer spread and its cellular development. This new study sheds further light on bladder cancer research, particularly on the changes that occur in healthy tissue just before cancer develops.
To conduct the research, they studied bladder tissue from fifteen people without cancer and five people with cancer. They then performed 2097 biopsies on the tissue samples to isolate segments of hundreds of cells. After this segmentation, the DNA genome was sequenced, and these sequences were analyzed to characterize somatic mutations.
Throughout this process, a high number of mutation types were found, as well as many factors that lead to them, but they did manage to identify how there is a common mutational signature to certain chemicals such as those in tobacco.
They also found that mutations in key genes associated with bladder cancer, such as TP53, FGFR3, and TERT, were absent in healthy bladder tissue. Therefore, the presence of these mutations, regardless of others, may indicate an early stage of the disease.
Research has discovered that these mutations depend not only on each individual but also on many factors, such as exposure to the chemicals in tobacco.
This discovery opens a potential avenue for early diagnosis of the disease, as searching urine for fragments of these mutations could detect cancer. It is estimated that 95 percent of patients diagnosed early survive for a year or more, a figure that drops to 36 percent when the diagnosis is made late.
If you would like to know more about the original press release published in the Sanger InstituteYou can do it at the following link:
https://www.sanger.ac.uk/news_item/dna-changes-in-healthy-bladder-provide-clues-on-how-cancer-arises/
