Mayo Clinic research looks at turning off cancer's growth

ROCHESTER, Minn. — An international research team led by Mayo Clinic oncologists has found a new way to identify and potentially stop the progression of many late-stage cancers.

The new approach can turn off genes that prevent cancer from growing, said Dr. Konstantinos Lazaridis, associate director at the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine. Late-stage bladder, blood, bone, brain, lung and kidney cancers are examples that oncologists say could be stopped in their tracks.

"This is a huge step. We have to understand what is behind this process to attack it effectively," Lazaridis said.

Researchers at the center already look at a cancer patient's normal DNA and the mutated DNA they find in their tumors. But this method, which has not had federal Food and Drug Administration approval and still is experimental, is based on a discipline called epigenomics, he said.

That is the name for a complex biological process through which individual cells read their genetic blueprints and determine what type of tissue to become.

The Mayo Clinic isn't the only medical facility that is looking at how epigenetics, which focuses on processes that determine how and when certain genes are turned on and off, and epigenomics, the analysis of those changes across many genes in an organism, relate to the development and potential treatment of cancers. But it is seeking volunteers for its individualized experimental treatments now.

"We may be able to screen people earlier with new methods that can prevent the development of cancer if we know what predisposes them to developing the disease," Lazaridis said.