Glioblastomas — the most common and aggressive brain tumors in adults — can be difficult to treat because therapies only affect a proportion of tumor cells, which in turn leads to a poor survival rate in the patient population. It is hypothesized that a subgroup of cells within these tumors, identified as Glioblastoma Stem Cells (GSCs), reproduce making identical drug-resistant copies of themselves.

Huge strides are being made in the realm of Immuno-Oncology by a team of scientists at Sichuan University in West China. Nature reports that for the first time — as part of a clinical trial — an individual with aggressive lung cancer has been injected with their own cells engineered to express edited genes leveraging the CRISPR-Cas9 technique and targeting the PD-1 encoding gene. PD-1, which upon T-cell activation blocks the recognition of cancer cells as a foreign entity, impedes the immune responses innate ability to disrupt tumor cell proliferation. The CRISPR-Cas9 strategy combines a DNA-cutting enzyme along with molecular guide that can identify targets (such as PD-1) and replace the removed sequence with stretches of non-coding DNA.

Research has found that KRAS mutations are present in 30 percent of non-small cell lung cancers (NSLC) and in 40 to 50 percent of colorectal cancers. This mutation prevalence has been linked to poor survival rates and chemotherapy resistance within the impacted oncology cohorts. In an attempt to remedy this known issue, researchers at University of California, San Diego screened KRAS mutant cells for synthetic lethal interactions (https://www.genomeweb.com/cancer/kras-driven-tumor-growth-inhibited-microrna). Results concluded that the miR-1298 gene when inhibited is lethal to the growth of KRAS-mutated cells, both in vitro and in vivo through a combination of microarray analyses.

At BioIVT, we understand the importance of mutation analysis in cancer research. Our scientists routinely perform DNA and RNA isolation from both FFPE and Fresh Frozen tissues, as well as biofluids. Additionally, we utilize PCR and FISH for the determining the presence and/or location of particular mutations within tissue specimens. Standard mutation analysis is available for lung, skin, and colon cancers, with custom mutation screens available upon request.