Cause of #cancer is written into DNA of tumours, scientists find, creating a ’black box’ for origin of disease
▻https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2019/04/15/cause-cancer-written-dna-tumours-scientists-find-creating-black
Even with lung cancer, it is not known just how much can be attributed to smoking and how much could be linked to other factors, such as living by a busy road, or inhaling pollutants at work.
But now scientists at Cambridge University and King’s College London have shown that tumours hold information like a ’black box’ pointing to the cause of disease.
They exposed stem cells to dozens of known carcinogens and recorded how each alters its DNA code as cancer forms. It provides a ‘fingerprint’ or ‘mutational signature’ of the underlying cause and could even show which was the biggest culprit.