Online Database Helps Organize Clinically Important Cancer Gene Mutations
Many clinical trials use genome sequencing to learn which genetic mutations are present in a patient’s tumor cells. The question is important, because targeting the right mutations with the right drugs can stop cancer in its tracks. But it can be difficult to determine which particular mutations might drive cancer growth and could be targeted by therapy, and which are of no consequence.
To help molecular pathologists, laboratory directors, bioinformaticians, and oncologists identify key mutations that drive tumor growth in tissues obtained during clinical studies, researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center–Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC–James) have designed an online database called the Cancer Driver Log, or CanDL. The freely accessible database is described in a paper published by Damodaran et al in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.
Database Features
CanDL includes information on mutations in 60 genes, with 334 distinct variants and 169 unique matching literature references across multiple cancers, as of August 24, 2015.
“Currently, pathology laboratories that sequence tumor tissue must manually research the scientific literature for individual mutations to determine whether they are considered a driver or a passenger to facilitate clinical interpretation,” said Sameek Roychowdhury, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Pharmacology. “CanDL expedites this time-consuming process by placing key information about known and possible driver mutations that might be effective targets for drug development at their fingertips,” he said. “CanDL does not tell doctors what to do—it places the evidence in the scientific literature at their fingertips, enabling them to read and interpret the information themselves.”
Identifying important driver mutations in a patient’s tumor cells can also help reveal why some patients in a clinical trial respond well to a novel agent, while others do not respond at all. That information can help improve the effectiveness of existing anticancer drugs, and it can identify subsets of patients who would benefit most from particular therapies.
“Overall, this freely available database will facilitate rapid annotation of cancer genomic testing in molecular pathology labs for mutations,” Dr. Roychowdhury concluded.
Dr. Roychowdhury is the corresponding author for the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics article.
This work was supported in part by funding from Pelotonia, the Prostate Cancer Foundation, the American Cancer Society, and the National Human Genome Research Institute.
The content in this post has not been reviewed by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Inc. (ASCO®) and does not necessarily reflect the ideas and opinions of ASCO®.
