There appear to be important differences between male- and female-derived tumors, according to two new studies. The findings revealed differences both in genes that drive cancer and in the regulation of key pathways that may predict responses to cancer treatment.
One study used data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and found that genes associated with tumor aggressiveness varied by sex, according to an October 2, 2018 press release from the American Association for Cancer Research.
A second study, led by John Quackenbush, the Henry Pickering Walcott Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and chair of the Department of Biostatistics, used TCGA data to compare genomic data from male- and female-derived colon cancer tumors and showed that 21 genes were differentially regulated between the male and female tumors.
Both studies were published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Read the American Association for Cancer Research press release: Sex-linked differences in cancer may identify gender-specific genetic drivers and predict responses to treatment