IBS GRANADA scientists lead a study that can help diagnose and predict children with leukemia
The research team includes researchers from the ibs.GRANADA genetics and molecular oncology research group, with professors and researchers from the Biochemistry I and III departments of the Faculties of Sciences and Medicine of the University of Granada; and researchers from the Hospital Regional de Málaga and Hospital Sant Joan de Déu de Barcelona.
A biomarker of disease
"If these data are confirmed, the TCL6 gene could be used as a disease biomarker, which could have a positive impact on the clinical picture of these patients", comment the researchers Marta Cuadros Celorrio, and Álvaro Andrades Delgado, authors of this study, who He has carried out at the Pfizer Center-University of Granada-Junta de Andalucía for Genomics and Oncology Research (GENYO).
"The presence of this gene could not only be used as a biomarker but to predict the survival of this disease, since pediatric patients who suffer a loss of TCL6 expression have worse survival," says UGR professor Pedro Pablo Medina Vico and director of the CTS-993 group and coordinator of the investigation.
The role that TCL6 plays in leukemias could have gone unnoticed because it belongs to a group of genes that are part of our non-coding DNA. Until recently, much of the non-coding DNA was classified as "junk DNA" as it was thought to have no biological activity, and the function of most of it is still unknown today. One of the research lines of the CTS-993 group is the study of these genes, which, although they are the great unknown at present, constitute most of the human genome and are on the frontier of current knowledge about the genetics of the pathology human.
The study has recently been published in Blood Cancer Journal, a prestigious international journal that is among the top 10% of the best journals in the field of hematology.