Justin Bujold, Roxann Guerrette, Rémi Richard et Annie-Pier Beauregard
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) is rarely found in adults but will affect more than a fourth of children diagnosed with cancer. With around 90% remission, this cancer is still a very morbid disease with high mortality rates.
Personalized medicine is the most promising alternative to fight cancer. Briefly, this new procedure allows for the detection of specific mutations indicative of a specific cancers allowing doctors to access better treatment.
Furthermore, genetic sequencing is the method used to determine the mutations involved in a patients' cancer. Previously, sequencing of the whole genome took approximately 20 years. Currently, Next generation sequencing allows us to know the composition in DNA of the human genome in very little time. The high throughput sequencing approach (HTS) is a fast and less expensive tool for prognosis. HTS is becoming more accessible for doctors and patients for diagnostic and personalized medicine. Moreover, the use of this new approach for cancer research will help us understand this disease more in depth and contribute to the innovation of more precise prognostic tests and more specific therapeutic tools.
In 2012, The Atlantic Cancer Research Institute (ACRI) acquired two next generation high throughput sequencers (Ion Proton) from Life Technologies. Since then, the researchers of ACRI have work closely with the molecular genetic laboratory of the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre and Life Technologies to develop new diagnostic tools for many types of cancer and diseases. This new collectivity, named molecular diagnostic and sequence laboratory, offers sequencing of patients' tumors to assess mutations responsible for the cancer.
This fund raising campaign will contribute to improve diagnostics and prognostics of children affected by the acute lymphoblastic lymphoma and treat their disease in a faster, more effective, precise and less toxic way.
High throughput sequencing is a promising alternative for rapid prognosis of cancer such as the infantile acute lymphoblastic lymphoma. The future of personalised medicine is very near. Help us make this future a present and put cancer in the past.
