The Detection And Treatment Of Cancer - 1554 Words

How is a greater understanding of genetics fuelling a change in our diagnosis and treatment of cancer? It is estimated by Cancer Research UK that one in two people in the UK will get cancer at some point in their lives . This startling statistic shows an inept global failure to bring about control of one of most prevalent and fatal known diseases. But the growth in cancer incidence is not confined to the UK; in 2012 14.1 million new people were diagnosed worldwide, with forty percent of these new cases originating in countries of a low or medium HDI . This essay will focus on the how genomics are revolutionising the detection and treatment of cancer in the twenty-first century. Genomes are composed of the DNA that is contained in cells†¦show more content†¦But this is very large, so often, only the exome is sequenced; the parts of the genome that can be transcribed into messenger RNA, and therefore encodes proteins. Sometimes, the changes are not in the actual sequence of the DNA. Some of the letters are marked by the addition of a special chemical and these marks change how a cell sees these sequences. Therefore, these marks can change which proteins are made in which cells. The entire collection of chemical marks on your DNA is called the epigenome. Scientists now have ways of finding the areas of the genome that have these marks. They can use these methods to find out when the DNA of a cancer cell has more or less of these marks, or has them in different places, than the DNA of a normal cell to detect the presence of cancer. Scientists who have looked at large scale genome studies have been able to categorise the different genetic alterations into two types; driver or passenger mutations. Driver mutations are changes that confer a selective growth advantage on the cell. In other words, they contribute directly to the cell becoming cancerous. They are therefore potential targets for cancer therapies. Passenger mutations have no direct effect on cancer growth. These are random mutations that accumulate as a person ages, and also occur due to genomic instability in cancer cells. However, importantly they do not contribute to cancer. The formation of cancer is a multi-stage process, in which a normal healthy cell