Scientists Identify Genetic Variant In East Asians

SINGAPORE, March 20 (Bernama) -- A multi-national research team led by scientists at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School has discovered a key gene variant in people of East Asian descent that contributes to their resistance to certain cancer drugs. Now, the team, led by Associate Professor Ong Sin Tiong at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, working with the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), Singapore General Hospital and the National Cancer Centre Singapore, has discovered that there is a common variation in the BIM gene in people of East Asian descent that contributes to some patients' failure to benefit from these tyrosine kinase inhibitor drugs. With this knowledge, clinicians and clinician-researchers are thus, able to develop a strategy to help patients overcome it. This milestone research study has also been published in the Nature Medicine journal on March 18, this year. Commenting on the breakthrough, Ong, who is Associate Professor in the Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Signature Research Programme at Duke-NUS and Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Medicine, Duke University Medical Center, said: "Because we could determine in cells how the BIM gene variant caused TKI resistance, we were able to devise a strategy to overcome it. "A novel class of drugs called the BH3-mimetics provided the answer. Our next step will be to bring this to clinical trials with patients," he said. -- BERNAMA