In hepatoblastoma, the most common childhood liver cancer, each liver sample from patients who received cisplatin or carboplatin ahead of surgery held about 2,200 mutations, the scale usual in adult liver. NanoSeq read healthy tissue, tumour and blood separately. The authors discuss a longer watch, not dropping the drug. A DNA damage signature confined to the liver does not appear in the other tissues.
Each liver sample from children who received cisplatin or carboplatin ahead of hepatoblastoma surgery held about 2,200 mutations. NanoSeq read healthy liver cells, tumour tissue and blood molecule by molecule, with comparisons against children on other drugs, children given none, and fetal liver tissue. That is the mutation scale usual in adult liver. The drugs circulate through the whole body, yet the liver showed a heavier load than blood.[1]
At the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Gothenburg, Anna Wenger's group read 186 tissue pieces from nine children with liver tumours after platinum, and added 77 pieces from children on non-platinum drugs or none at all. The signature peculiar to the liver is missing elsewhere. Foad J. Rouhani said the same compound can leave a different kind of DNA mark from tissue to tissue.[2]
In localised hepatoblastoma, five-year survival with platinum drugs rose from 20 percent to above 80 percent. The authors urge a longer watch, not taking the drug off the shelf. Rouhani said conversion of the changed cells into tumours is not certain. Sam Behjati said chemotherapy is still the main tool that cures childhood cancer, and that no other path exists. The text sits in Science.[1], [2]
