The door to future therapeutic applications based on personalized medicine was opened by cancer researchers who studied 44 known genetic variants.

Lupien, who specializes in epigenetics in cancer, is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto.
"Our work has identified the mechanisms altered by genetic risk variants in regions believed for a long time to be 'junk DNA'; that is, DNA outside the genes with no known function - until now," Lupien said.
"This moves us one step closer to translating genetic profiling into patient care and advancing personalized cancer medicine.
"We discovered that genetic variants promoting breast cancer are found in elements with a regulatory role that modulate genes expression," he said.
The team discovered the changes affecting the activity of two well known drivers of breast cancer - the estrogen receptor ESR1 and the transcription factor FOXA1 - that work together in breast cancer cells.
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"The pattern emerged revealing why genetic variants can promote breast cancer," Lupien said.
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The research is published in the journal Nature Genetics.
Source-ANI