A genomic analysis of 37 patients with Sézary syndrome, a rare form of T-cell lymphoma that affects the skin and causes large numbers of atypical T-lymphocytes to circulate, reveals mutations in genes that affect T-cell signaling and those that interfere with cell cycle checkpoints that govern cell division, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in a report in the journal Nature Genetics.
“These kinds of studies are taking us to the doorstep of personal genomics,” said Dr. David Wheeler, professor in the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center and a corresponding author of the paper.
“This research is important because it identifies genes that may be important in this rare cancer,” said Dr. Linghua Wang, assistant professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor and lead author of the study.