In a newly published study, Cleveland Clinic researchers have uncovered differences in the bacterial composition of breast tissue of healthy women vs. women with breast cancer. The research team has discovered for the first time that healthy breast tissue contains more of the bacterial species Methylobacterium, a finding which could offer a new perspective in the battle against breast cancer.
Bacteria that live in the body, known as the microbiome, influence many diseases.
Most research has been done on the “gut” microbiome, or bacteria in the digestive tract. Researchers have long suspected that a “microbiome” exists within breast tissue and plays a role in breast cancer but it has not yet been characterized. The research team has taken the first step toward understanding the composition of the bacteria in breast cancer by uncovering distinct microbial differences in healthy and cancerous breast tissue.
“To my knowledge, this is the first study to examine both breast tissue and distant sites of the body for bacterial differences in breast cancer,” said co-senior author Charis Eng, M.D., Ph.D., chair of Cleveland Clinic’s Genomic Medicine Institute and director of the Center for Personalized Genetic Healthcare. “Our hope is to find a biomarker that would help us diagnose breast cancer quickly and easily.  In our wildest dreams, we hope we can use microbiomics right before breast cancer forms and then prevent cancer with probiotics or antibiotics.”
The study examined the tissues of 78 patients who underwent mastectomy for invasive carcinoma or elective cosmetic breast surgery. In addition, they examined oral rinse and urine to determine the bacterial composition of these distant sites in the body.
In addition to the Methylobacterium finding, the team discovered that cancer patients’ urine samples had increased levels of gram-positive bacteria, including Staphylococcus and Actinomyces. Further studies are needed to determine the role these organisms may play in breast cancer.
Co-senior author Stephen Grobymer, M.D., said, “If we can target specific pro-cancer bacteria, we may be able to make the environment less hospitable to cancer and enhance existing treatments. Larger studies are needed but this work is a solid first step in better understanding the significant role of bacterial imbalances in breast cancer.” Dr. Grobmyer is section head of Surgical Oncology and director of Breast Services at Cleveland Clinic.

Cleveland Clinic
newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2017/10/05/cleveland-clinic-researchers-find-link-between-bacterial-imbalances-and-breast-cancer/

Lymphoma is the most common blood cancer, but the diagnosis belies a wildly diverse and little understood genetic foundation for the disease that hampers successful treatment.
An international research effort led by Duke Cancer Institute scientists has been working to better understand the genetic underpinnings of the most prevalent form of this cancer — diffuse large B cell lymphoma – and how those genes might play a role in patients’ responses to therapies.
The researchers analysed tumour samples from 1,001 patients who had been diagnosed with diffuse large B cell lymphoma over the past decade. These patients had been treated at 12 institutions around the world.
Using whole exome sequencing, the researchers pinpointed 150 genetic drivers of the disease, many newly identified. The team then tested to see if there were any correlations between the genes and how well patients had responded to standard therapies. The team applied a genome editing technique known as CRISPR to knock out each of the 20,000 genes in lymphoma cells to identify those that are critical for lymphoma cells to grow. By assessing the genetic, CRISPR and clinical results, the researchers found several critical genetic links that could help guide treatments.
“This work provides a comprehensive road map in terms of research and clinical priorities,” said Sandeep Davé, MD, professor of medicine at Duke. “We have very good data now to pursue new and existing therapies that might target the genetic mutations we identified. Additionally, this data could also be used to develop genetic markers that steer patients to therapies that would be most effective.”

Duke Cancer Institute
www.dukecancerinstitute.org/news/researchers-identify-genetic-drivers-most-common-form-lymphoma

A DNA variant—located in the DNMT3B gene and commonly found in people of European and African descent—increases the likelihood of developing nicotine dependence, smoking heavily, and developing lung cancer, according to a new study led by RTI International.
Nearly 1 billion people smoke and 6 million premature deaths occur worldwide each year from cigarette smoking, according to the World Health Organization. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death and one person dies approximately every 6 seconds from smoking-related causes, according to the WHO.
The new study is the largest genome-wide association study of nicotine dependence. Researchers studied more than 38,600 former and current smokers from the United States, Iceland, Finland, and the Netherlands.
“This new finding widens the scope of how genetic factors are known to influence nicotine dependence,” said Dana Hancock, Ph.D., genetic epidemiologist at RTI and lead author of the study. “The variant that we identified is common, occurring in 44 percent of Europeans or European Americans and 77 percent of African Americans, and it exerts important effects on gene regulation in human brain, specifically in the cerebellum, which has long been overlooked in the study of addiction.”
The genetic variant was linked to an increased risk of nicotine dependence by testing nearly 18 million variants across the genome for association with nicotine dependence. The variant was also tested in independent studies and found to associate with heavier smoking and with increased risk of lung cancer. 

RTI International
www.rti.org/news/researchers-identify-gene-influences-nicotine-dependence
 

Effective 5 September 2017, Biovendor – Laboratorní medicína a.s. (BioVendor) acquired 100% of the shares of DIAsource ImmunoAssays SA from the Australian stock listed company Anteo Diagnostics (ASX: ADO). Anteo Diagnostics had acquired DIAsource in January 2016.

DIAsource ImmunoAssays is a Belgian company specialized for 30 years in the development, manufacturing, and sales and distribution of immunoassay tests and open instrumentation solutions for clinical medical diagnostics. It is based in Louvain-La-Neuve, south of Brussels, and employs 80 people.

DIAsource is a leading provider in IVD market segments such as Vitamin D, ELISA and RIA assays, and produced double digit growth of both revenue and EBITDA over the last five years, reaching 16.3 Mi € net trade sales income and 3.4 Mi € EBITDA in 2016. It has direct sales representation in Belgium, France and Spain and strong sales in Middle East, Asia, and South America. Its clinical diagnostics product catalogue features over 190 ELISA and 140 RIA assays.

For Biovendor, the international company with headquarters in Brno, Czech Republic, this acquisition offers not only an extension with a broad panel of ELISA and RIA assays, antibodies and reagents for clinical diagnostics, but also direct sales presence in Belgium, France and Spain, and a worldwide network of over 100 sales and distribution partners in over 70 countries, thereby representing another important step towards internationalization.
With DIAsource representing the largest acquisition to date, BioVendor continues its long-term plan of international expansion after previous acquisitions, in the last three years since 2014, of ImmunoLab (Germany), ViennaLab Diagnostics (Austria), and Oxford Biosystems (UK), following the previous acquisition of TestLine Clinical Diagnostics (Czech Republic).

DIAsource ImmunoAssays, based in Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, manufactures and sells manual kits and open automation for clinical diagnostics in more than 70 countries worldwide, both direct and via its worldwide network of distribution partners.
BioVendor group, an international diagnostics holding with headquarters in Brno, Czech Republic, employs over 380 employees across 14 companies operating in six countries. BioVendor is 60% controlled by Consillium, the investment company of Mr. Tomáš Němec, and 40% owned by Dr. Viktor Růžička, its founder and Chairman.

www.diasource-diagnostics.comwww.biovendor.com/biovendor-group

Lower levels of defective viral RNA molecules can make influenza viruses that affect humans more dangerous. This finding could help to guide patient treatment and provide important information for the design of influenza prevention strategies.
Flu viruses have defective genetic material that can activate the infected patient’s immune system, and lower levels of these molecules can increase the severity of the virus infection. This is the main conclusion reached by researchers from the Centre for Biomedical Research in Respiratory Diseases Network (CIBERES) and in the laboratory of Dr. Amelia Nieto at the Centro Nacional de Biotecnología of the CSIC (CNB-CSIC), in a study led by Dr. Ana Falcón that has just been published in the journal PLOS Pathogens.
Influenza is particularly dangerous for babies, the elderly, and people with underlying medical conditions, although healthy people can also suffer a serious infection. Of the many flu virus strains that circulate every year, some are more virulent than others. "So far we have found severity markers for specific strains, but not a more general marker like this, which applies to many strains and would be more useful in clinical decision-making and in the design of prevention strategies," explains Falcón.
To identify this marker, scientists from CIBERES and the CNB-CSIC, in collaboration with other health and research institutions, centred on defective viral genomes (DVG). These molecules, which consist of viral RNA fragments with defective genetic information, are found in many influenza virus strains.
Previous studies suggested that DVG activate the immune system in infected animals, and could restrict the severity of influenza infection; in this study, the scientists tested whether these molecules could serve as a general marker of influenza severity.
The validity of the marker was tested in infected mice and in cell cultures of human respiratory tissue with different strains of influenza A H1N1 virus, the subtype responsible for the 2009 influenza pandemic. The results showed that strains with lower DVG accumulation in cell cultures produced a more serious infection in mice.
The team also analysed the genomes of viruses isolated from samples from people who had a severe infection or died from the flu during the 2009 "swine flu" pandemic, or in later flu outbreaks with similar characteristics. They found that H1N1 strains that caused severe symptoms had significantly less DVG accumulation than influenza A strains from people who had only mild symptoms.
Overall, these results suggest that low DVG levels indicate an increased risk of serious illness in patients infected with the influenza A virus. With more research, these findings could help predict flu severity, guide patient treatment, and prompt new flu prevention strategies.

Centro Nacional de Biotecnología of the CSIC (CNB-CSIC)
www.cnb.csic.es/index.php/en/science-society/news/item/1450-identifican-un-marcador-viral-que-permitiria-predecir-la-gravedad-de-la-gripe-en-pacientes-infectados