Treating cancer, one of the most dreaded human diseases, has just taken a very huge step forward as a team of scientists from the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California in Los Angeles completed the first genomic sequencing of a brain cancer cell.

The said findings can greatly help scientists in identifying new molecular targets to be able to manufacture more effective and less dangerous drugs. This can also lead to more personalized treatments for cancer since genomic sequencing is different for individual patients.

The monitoring of brain cancer recurrence is also boosted by this big finding. Genomic sequencing will be able to correctly determine whether cancer cells, in the brain or anywhere, have been completely destroyed or not. This can help doctors better diagnose their patients and avoid overtreatment, especially with anti-cancer drugs that can become harmful and cause long term problems when taken too often.

The research was done by sequencing a glioblastoma cell line named U87, which has been and still is being studied by various laboratories around the world. The underlying principle for using this certain cell line by the UCLA team is mainly because whatever result they may find will benefit not only their research, but also other researches being conducted in other laboratories. The sequencing of U87 can help other researchers in their studies and allow them to reinterpret their own conclusions or even better, move into new research directions with it.

“This is very exciting because we, as scientists, can now move forward with revealing complete cancer genomes,” says Dr. Stan Nelson, the study’s senior author and professor of human genetics at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Gene Expression Shared Resource.

PLoS Genetics, at its online journal, wrote that the study was done using the latest and most advanced technologies. The brain cell sequencing was finished in less than a month and believed to have cost around $35,000.

Nelson further added that cancer cells are bottom line genetic and have acquired mutations that have made it very hard for doctors to solve, even in this advanced age and technology. Since cancer cells can be a subject that is too complicated to study, this genomic sequencing of a brain cancer cell is a very huge advancement in the fight to destroy cancer.