科学家鉴别出人类发育早期阶段的特殊癌症标志物

  近日，来自弗吉尼亚生物信息研究所的研究人员通过研究揭开了起源于神经嵴的细胞的基因组和肿瘤发展的关联，相关研究发表在国际杂志Oncotarget上，该研究或为开发新型的癌症诊断及治疗方法提供思路。
  文章中研究者解释了为何某些类型的癌症共共享基因组和临床特征，或为治疗脑癌，比如髓母细胞瘤、神经胶质瘤等癌症提供一定帮助。2015年美国有超过2.2万新发脑癌患者，而且有超过7.3万新发的皮肤癌患者；为了解释促癌基因组的改变，研究人员对经常容易忽视的人类基因组—微卫星重复DNA序列进行了研究。
  在人类基因组中大约存在100万个微卫星，神经嵴组织作为胚胎中较薄的细胞层，其包含有许多遗传指令可以帮助产生多种细胞类型；当来自神经嵴的细胞发生迁移时，遗传之另就会变成乱码，从而引发癌细胞产生，比如神经学肿瘤，其就起始于来自神经嵴的神经胶质细胞。研究者表示，不同的癌症类型可以被发现或者通过重复性DNA序列内的特殊标志物来进行预测，这被认为是癌症相关的微卫星位点（CAML）。
  基因组中包括大量被认为的垃圾DNA，因为这些DNA的功能为止，而微卫星DNA序列却在某些特殊疾病比如亨廷顿症等疾病中扮演重要的角色，而这些微卫星序列对于研究包括从癌症到自闭症等多种人类疾病将会带来巨大帮助。后期研究者将进行更多研究，他们认为利用不同癌症的遗传特质或可帮助追踪疾病在神经嵴阶段的起源，从而为开发更好的治疗手段来清除肿瘤提供一定的思路。（转化医学网360zhyx.com）
  以上为转化医学网原创翻译整理，转载请注明出处和链接！
转化医学网推荐的原文摘要：

‘Cut from the same cloth’: Shared microsatellite variants among cancers link to ectodermal tissues-neural tube and crest cells
Oncotarget
Enusha Karunasena1,*, Lauren J. Mciver1,*, Jasmin H. Bavarva1, Xiaowei Wu2, Hongxiao Zhu2, Harold R. Garner1

The pluripotent cells of the embryonic ectodermal tissues are known to be a precursor for multiple tumor types. The adaptability of these cells is a trait exploited by cancer. We previously described cancer-associated microsatellite loci (CAML) shared between glioblastoma (GBM) and lower-grade gliomas. Therefore, we hypothesized that these variants, identified from germline DNA, are shared by cancers from tissues originating from ectodermal tissues: neural tube cells (NTC) and crest cells (NCC). Using exome sequencing data from four cancers with origins to NTC and NCC, a ‘signature’ of loci significant to each cancer (p-value ≤ 0.01) was created and compared with previously identified CAML from breast cancer. The results of this analysis show that variant loci among the cancers with tissue origins from NTC/NCC were closely linked. Signaling pathways linked to genes with non-coding CAML genotypes revealed enriched connections to hereditary, neurological, and developmental disease or disorders. Thus, variants in genes from tissues initiating from NTC/NCC, if recurrently detected, may indicate a common etiology. Additionally, CAML genotypes from non-tumor DNA may predict cancer phenotypes and are common to shared embryonic tissues of origin.