Genes reveal kidney cancer's risk of recurrence

DNA sequencing may provide a more effective way to predict a patient’s risk of kidney cancer recurrence and could one day lead to more personalized treatment.

Studying the mutations in kidney cancer after surgery could help to better predict the risk of the disease coming back, according to the latest results of a decade-long international study.

The research, undertaken by a team of 44 researchers at 23 institutions across Europe and Canada, including McGill University, is the largest to link the genetic changes that occur in kidney cancer to patient outcomes.

More than 400,000 people are diagnosed with kidney cancer each year globally, including 8,100 in Canada and 81,800 in the United States. “Our research shows that it may be possible to improve the way we determine risk in each patient by looking at the genetic mutations present in their cancer,” says Yasser Riazalhosseini, Assistant Professor of Human Genetics, and Head of Cancer Genomics at the Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Institute of Genomic Medicine at McGill University.

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Media coverage on research in our lab toward drug-repositioning for cancer treatment;

Medication against schizophrenia inhibits pancreatic cancer

A receptor for the dopamine neurotransmitter promotes growth and spread of pancreatic cancer -- and schizophrenia drugs, which block the function of this receptor, slowed tumor growth and metastatic spread in mice, according to researchers at McGill University and the German Cancer Research Center.

Cancer of the pancreas is an extremely aggressive disease with a dismal prognosis. “While the overall five-year survival rate of all cancer patients stands at 63%, it is only about 5% for pancreatic cancer – a number that has remained largely unchanged for the last three decades,” notes Yasser Riazalhosseini, professor of Human Genetics at McGill and corresponding author of the new study, published in the journal Gastroenterology.

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