Oncochips of researcher Barbacid against cancer

2001/06/20 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Genetika
• Medikuntza
• Ikerketa-zentroak

Mariano Barbacid, president of the National Cancer Research Center, has made a series of special micromatrices. These ‘oncochips’ are appropriate to analyze different types of cancer. In fact, they contain 2,403 cancer-related genes, plus 4,111 that are activated or disabled in the background.

To do this, researchers have extracted RNA from the most known tumors and marked it with a fluorescent theme and established it in the matrix. RNA is produced only by activated genes, so the RNA of the genes activated in a tumor will stick to the oncochinillo RNA of the same sequence. In this way, through fluorescence, the genes that have activity in the tumor will be visualized.

Until 2004, tumor samples from thousands of patients will be analyzed. The objective is to know the genetic data of the usual tumors: breast, blood, colon-rectum, lung and urinary tract cancer. All this will allow in the future to know better the evolution and treatment of each tumor. It seems to be expected that in the short term important advances are made in the fight against cancer.