New technique sorts drivers from passengers in cancer genomics, implicates GON4L
Tumor DNA is cluttered with genomic alterations, the vast majority of which have little or no functional or clinical relevance. This means that even when cancer researchers discover an alteration in a tumor or a line of cancer cells, the alteration may or may not be relevant to the progression of the disease - chances are good (and history has shown) that many alterations that are correlated with cancer are not causative of cancer; many alterations are "passengers" rather than "drivers". A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in the journal Cancer Research demonstrates a novel method for sorting passenger from driver alterations, and uses this method to pinpoint a new driver and potential therapeutic target in cancer progression, GON4L.