Gene Fusions May Be Unique Identifier for Cancer

Arul M. Chinnaiyan, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and a team of researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School have discovered a way to efficiently test for abnormally fused genes. These genes are thought to increase the growth rate of certain cancers, such as prostate cancer and blood cancers.

The new process was recently described in the online journal Nature, in which the team explains how this technology can be used in to identify other unrecognized abnormalities in tumor cells.

"We identified gene fusions in prostate cancer at a very high prevalence - 70 percent or higher," he says. "That told us that these fusions are likely present in many common solid tumors, but we didn't have a good way to identify them."

The study done by Chinnaiyan and his colleagues uses two different methods to help identify gene fusions. By using both long and sequences that point to abnormally fused DNA, researchers may be able to identify when there are gene fusions indicating cancer in solid tumors.

"If you use either of the techniques by themselves, you end up generating too many false positives," Chinnaiyan says. "But if you combine them, you can home in on the real fusions in the sample."

Chinnaiyan believes this new method of detection may improve overall cancer rates. The fusion genes have only been found in cancerous cells indicating that these genes may be unique identifiers of cancer.

This new technique is currently being used in testing for prostate cancer. "We're trying to detect these fusions in the urine of men so we can predict who has prostate cancer and who has the more aggressive forms of prostate cancer," he says. The test currently being used "has a lot of drawbacks, in that only 20 percent of patients who have an elevated PSA actually have prostate cancer. We would like to develop better diagnostics."

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