Professor SONG YongSang
Professors SONG YongSang (School of Medicine) and Duhee BANG (Yonsei University) have discovered why targeted cancer therapy shows high rates of failure in treating ovarian cancer. The research team collected 11 spatially separated tumor samples from a stage three ovarian cancer patient and performed whole exome sequencing and copy number analysis. The team found that only 6 percent of the somatic mutations were present in every sample, with TP53 being the only known mutant gene consistently present in all samples. The team concluded that as ovarian cancer shows a high level of intratumor heterogeneity, targeted cancer therapy which acts against prototype cancer cells may not work as well in treating ovarian cancer as it does in the case of other types of cancer.
- The research results were published in BMC Cancer, a UK medical journal, on February 26.
- Dr. SONG Yong Sang: http://www.snuh.org/english/ihc/ihc04/sub01/sub01/viewDoctor.jsp?deptcd=OG/
- SNU Hospital: http://www.snuh.org/english
Summary by LEE Hee Un, SNU English Editor, gurume0221@snu.ac.kr
Proofread by Melora Brett Briana Johnson, morningcalm2@gmail.com