Scientists based at McGill University have shown that the DNA found in cancer cells can be used to classify sub-types of human leukemia. According to
New Scientist. the researchers have achieved this through the use of 3-D imaging technologies.
For the study, the researchers assessed the 3-D formation of genomes within leukemia cell lines. They found that studying this shape was as good at—or better than—indicating the type of cancer as gene expression.
Josée Dostie, an associate professor of genomics and molecular biology at McGill discusses this further in a
research note: "Our study validates a new research avenue—the application of 3-D genomics for developing medical diagnostics or treatments that could be explored for diseases where current technologies, including gene expression data, have failed to improve patient care."
The research has been
published in the journal
Genome Biology, in a paper titled "Classifying leukemia types with chromatin conformation data".
