05/09/2011

A team of researchers from Vall d'Hebron University Hospital, coordinated by Dr. Josep Tabernero, Chief of Oncology, participates in the first sequencing of nine colorectal tumor genomes that have been compared with nine complete genomes of healthy tissue from the same patients. The results of the investigation, which has been made during two years and in which have also helped the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and centers of the United States as the Broad Institute of Harvard University, Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston, Cancer Memorial Center Sloan-Kettering in New York and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, are published today in Nature Genetics.Among the most relevant results obtained in the research include the development of 75 genetic alterations per tumor, mostly deletions, the most frequent. Also have been found eleven gene fusions and within them the fusion protein VTI1ATCF7L2 associated with the pathway wnt beta-catenina. Dr. Tabernero notes that "so far had been published partial sequences and a complete sequence and this work has been a huge effort, since there is no series with the same number of patients."