Cancer Grand Challenges shared on their X/Twitter:

”Congratulation Cancer Grand Challenges team Mutographs on their paper in Nature today!

Showing the power of their mutational epidemiology approach, they uncovered mutational signatures underlying global variance in kidney cancer incidence rates. Read.

Led by Paul Brennan at IARC and Mike Stratton at Wellcome Sanger Institute, the team sequenced 962 (kidney cancer/ccRCC) genomes from 11 countries, across four continents.

They made the following three key findings:

1. They identified a new mutational signature of unknown origin, found in all countries, whose mutation load correlates with global incidence rates (SBS40b).
2. In Japan, they identified a mutational signature of unknown origin (SBS12), found in ~70% of cases.
3. In the Balkan region, they found a mutational signature, SBS22, associated with aristolochic acids, indicating widespread Aristolochia plant extract exposure.

Further work will be needed to identify:

• If these mutational signatures are causal in cancer development.
• If the population is still being exposed.
• How exposure leads to mutation.

Read more about team Mutographs.”

Source: Cancer Grand Challenges/X