A group of Swedish researchers may have found a cost-efficient way of examining individual leukemia cells, which could transform treatment strategies and make care more personalized, according to a study published in Nature Communications.
Cells are loaded with valuable genetic information that could be used to improve treatment tactics for diseases such as cancer; however, the limits of modern technologies make it difficult for clinicians and researchers to pinpoint in which cells genetic activity actually takes place.
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Researchers led by Joakim Lundeberg, PhD, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, published a study wherein they present a method of examining individual tumor cells in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Using conventional RNA sequencing, individuals are able to determine which RNA molecules are present in a biological sample, but not where or in which cells they are active. The technique developed by Dr Lundeberg and colleagues provides an analysis of all mRNA molecules in individual cells by binding location tags to the molecules. By sorting out these individual cells on a specially-made glass surface and then analyzing them with next-generation sequencing, one can determine which genes are active and in which cell a specific RNA molecule is to be found.
This allowed Dr Lundeberg and his team to determine that chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells do not consist of a single cell type, but rather a number of sub-clones that exhibit entirely different gene expression.
They believe that this new method could help to revolutionize the study of the cancer genome, providing a better understanding of disease function and how to best treat it.
"We have also developed an open, available software, which combines images of individual cells with information from the sequencing, that is, which genes are expressed and at what level,” Dr Lundeberg added in a press release. "With the new method, and the software, we can study thousands of cells in a day."
