Combined whole exome tumor and blood sequencing in pediatric cancer patients revealed mutations that could help explain the cause of cancer or have the potential to impact clinical cancer care in 40 percent of patients in a study led by researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Cancer Center.
These findings point toward the usefulness of broad-based testing of both tumor and blood samples for children diagnosed with solid tumors, say study senior co-authors Dr. Sharon Plon, professor of pediatrics at Baylor, and Dr. Will Parsons, associate professor of pediatrics at Baylor and Texas Children’s Cancer Center.
The study, which appears in the current issue of JAMA Oncology, is part of the ongoing Baylor College of Medicine Advancing Sequencing in Childhood Cancer Care (BASIC3) project funded through a $6.6 million grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Cancer Institute.
“This is an important study and a powerful illustration of how genomic data can be effectively used by skilled physicians in a clinical context,” said Dr. Richard Gibbs, professor of molecular and human genetics and director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor. Gibbs and Dr. Christine Eng, professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor, lead the study’s efforts to perform genomic testing -- conducted at the WGL -- and evaluate results.