Mitochondrial DNA Testing May Help Cancer Treatment
A mitochondrial DNA testing method has been currently reviewed by a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University, carried out by Dr. Bert Vogelstein, Kenneth W. Kinzler and colleagues and the recent finding has shown that mitochondrial DNA has the potential to track patients and tumors better than with the conventional approach.
Here’s an excerpt from an article via The New York Times:
Dr. Vogelstein’s team found that more than 80 percent of cancers had mutations in their mitochondrial DNA. These changes are easy to identify because the mitochondrial DNA genome is so small — just 16,000 units — compared with the three billion units of the genome in the cell’s nucleus.
The method his colleagues reported last month is more thorough, since the rearrangement is likely to occur in every cancer cell in the patient’s body. But it requires sequencing a patient’s entire genome. The mitochondrial DNA test is less expensive and so sensitive that a mutation can be picked up from a much smaller sample of blood.
Foot note: If you haven’t read about the recent mitochondrial DNA testing findings – find it out here.
Picture courtesy of GE Healthcare