The EACR’s ‘Highlights in Cancer Research’ is a regular summary of the most interesting and impactful recent papers in cancer research. Previously known as our Top 10 Cancer Research Publications, it is curated by the Board of the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR).
The list below appears in no particular order, and the summary information has been provided by the authors unless otherwise indicated.
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Smith J.C. and Sheltzer J.M., Cell Reports 38. 13 (2022).
doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2022.110569.
“This paper has many thought-provoking concepts challenging the very frequent (over)use of survival curves as indicators of importance of genes in cancer.” EACR Board
**Summary, future impact and graphical abstract by Alexandra Boitor**
Summary of findings
In addition to disease progression, cancer-associated mortality can also be caused by both under- and overtreatment. Treatment decisions are based on patient risk prediction which at the moment heavily relies on histopathological and radiological tumour classification. These methods require subjective judgements and cannot always unambiguously predict clinical outcomes. In this paper, the authors conducted a pan-cancer analysis across the 33 cancer types profiled by TCGA seeking to identify the genomic features that underlie patient outcomes. The following features were analysed for each tumour: point mutations, CNAs, gene expression, microRNA expression, DNA methylation, and protein expression. This analysis identified new prognostic features that may add prognostic value to methods currently used and challenges the value of mutations in cancer driver genes as biomarkers or treatment targets.
Future impact
By identifying 100 features/ cancer type that strongly correlate with patient outcomes, this paper paves the way to the identification of new biomarkers that could improve prognosis and could be used for treatment decisions in ambiguous clinical situations. In addition, this paper has the potential to reform drug target selection for anti-cancer therapeutic development by casting light on a couple of reasons why many anti-cancer drugs fail in clinical trials.
