The Feb. 24 issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine,
published by the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS), will include the discovery of a new technique in
genome sequencing that led scientists to develop a way to trace
cancer by identifying biomarkers present at specific kinds of
tumors in different patients. This technique, dubbed
Personalized Analysis of Rearranged Ends (PARE), involves
sequencing whole genomes of a patient’s tumor, developing
biomarkers that are only found in the patient’s tumor, and using
the biomarker to monitor residual and recurrent tumors, which is
essential to evaluating the effectiveness of treatments such as
radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery. “Whole genome sequencing
refers to a group of technologies whose goal is to identify the
precise sequence of all of the genes in a cell,” Dr. Bert
Vogelstein of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center said in a
video provided by the center. For 20 years, scientists have
known that tumors are caused by gene