Researchers develop an epigenetic clock that predicts the clinical evolution of patients with cancer

Recerca A research team from IDIBAPS-Hospital Clínic and the University of Barcelona has led an international study to develop an epigenetic clock that can trace how much the cancer cells have multiplied in the past. Thanks to this clock, they can predict the future growth of the tumour and clinical evolution of patients, so they could define treatment strategies according to the biological risk of the tumour. The study ICREA research professor at IDIBAPS and lecturer at the Department of Basic Clinical Practice of the UB, and counted on the participation of thirty-two researchers from sixteen institutions and six different countries. Recently, scientific studies revealed that epigenetics is not only the science that studies genes that are silenced or activated, but it also holds a function of cell memory. According to Martín-Subero, "we could say that the genome, which is the encyclopaedia of the current life in each cell, is formed by two types of books: the open one, with active genes, and the closed one, with genes that are silenced'. Researchers saw that the epigenetic changes that take place in the closed book of the genome store a hidden memory of the past cell growth. In the framework of the published study in Nature Cancer , the researchers studied the epigenetic alterations in more than 2,000 patients with different types of leukaemias and lymphomas, and saw that each time the cells reproduce, these write small marks in the closed book of the genome.