An international team of researchers, with the participation of Spanish scientists, completed the map of genetic changes in chronic lymphatic leukemia (CLL)the most common in the Western world with an incidence of approximately 5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants per year.
This tool will provide a better understanding of the disease and may lead to more accurate prognoses for patients, better diagnoses and the development of new treatments. The study was published yesterday in the journal Nature Genetics and analyzed the genome of more than 1,000 patients.
It was coordinated by researchers from IDIBAPS-Hospital Clínic, University of Barcelona, University of Oviedo, Cancer Network Biomedical Research Center (Ciberonc), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University and University of Ulm.
This disease is characterized by an increase in B lymphocytes, a type of white blood cells, which can be detected accidentally during routine blood tests.. In some cases it can be slow growing and have a good prognosis, while in others it can be fast and aggressive.. Knowledge of the molecular alterations at the origin of this very different evolution could make it possible to know the prognosis at an early stage.
“The objective of this study was to provide a virtually complete catalog of all genomic alterations that cause chronic lymphocytic leukemia and its molecular subtypes. It was a huge effort from a great international team that has been analyzing the genome of more than 1,000 patients using new bioinformatics tools for more than 4 yearsremarked the co-lead author of the study and head of the Molecular Pathology of Lymphoid Neoplasms Group at IDIBAPS, Elias Campo de Huesca.
The study identified 202 genes (including 109 new ones) which, when mutated, can lead to disease onset and progression. The characterization of the subtypes of this leukaemia, which differ in their genomic characteristics and their clinical evolution, has also been perfected. Integration of clinical outcomes with such genomic characteristics can predict the likelihood that a patient will have very indolent disease for many years.going into remission after treatment or the possibility that your leukemia is more aggressive and requires further treatment.
The results of this study may have an important impact on clinical practice, since “the new map will allow us to compare the genomic characteristics of new patients with data from patients with similar genetic profiles. and to know what their evolution and response to treatments has been,” he concluded.