Big data offers clues for new cancer drugs

SCIENTISTS are closer to developing treatments for dozens of types of cancer after they used big data to understand the disease’s survival tactics.

- Hanna Geissler Health Editor

Some cancers are caused by mutations, which make it harder for the body to repair damaged DNA.

Drugs can target those tumours by disrupting the back-up repair processes cancer cells rely on for survival, causing them to die. Previously this was mainly successful in those with BRCA-mutated breast, ovarian, prostate and pancreatic cancers.

Precise

Now research suggests more types of cancer may contain similar pairs of “synthetic-lethal partner genes”.