The results of a British study, the most comprehensive of cancer genetics, based on samples from more than 2500 tumors and 38 types of cancer, revealed an opportunity during which the patient can be tested for cancer and treated in the early stages of the disease.
The unusual author of the study, which was published in the journal Nature, Clemens Jolly, of the Francis Crick Institute in London: "It is unusual how it appears that some genetic changes occurred many years before the diagnosis, long before any other signs of possible Cancer, and possibly even in normal, apparent tissues.
For his part, the co-author of the institute, Peter Van Loo, said: "Opening these patterns means that new diagnostic tests that pick up for signs of cancer should now be developed early," according to the British newspaper, The Guardian.
Although the discovery that cancer seeds are often sown many years before the first symptoms appear, it will not change the mechanisms of cancer screening in the near term, but it indicates the possibility of discovering those at risk early.
The study, which came out of a work done as part of a comprehensive cancer analysis project for the whole genome, indicated that about half of the early mutations occurred in only 9 genes, which means that there is a relatively small group of common genes that act as catalysts of cells to move away from healthy development to the path towards cancer.
Hence it may be possible in the future to capture such mutations using so-called liquid biopsies, i.e. genetic tests that detect mutations in the DNA carried by the blood, which can indicate the presence of tumors elsewhere in the body.
While human cells undergo billions of mutations, a small number of them, called "catalytic mutations," cause cancer.
Using what they describe as a "carbon traceability method", scientists were able to rebuild the order in which the genome of cancer cells began, and the team found that these mutations occurred "particularly early" in ovarian cancer as well as in two types of brain tumors.
It is worth noting that about 363 thousand new cancer cases are reported in Britain every year, as the disease causes the death of 165 thousand people annually.