A new tool that can study cancer-associated mutational patterns

A large-scale survey of patient genomes has revealed dozens of mutational signatures associated with various cancer types

"Identifying mutational signatures is important because they are like fingerprints at a crime scene -- they help identify the culprit of cancer," says Nik-Zainal, a genomics and bioinformatician at the University of Cambridge

Andrew Futreal of MD Anderson Cancer Center, who was not involved in the study, told The Associated Press: "We can really begin to tease out the basis of the erosive forces that underlie cancer

The researchers analyzed 12,222 patient samples from the 100,000 Genomes Project and several thousand other genomes in existing datasets, yielding 18,640 genomes across 19 cancer types, the largest to date.

David Szuts, a researcher at the Cancer Institute's Center for Enzymology Research in Nature Sciences, explained in an opinion piece in Hungary that with hundreds of samples for each organ type, the team was able to detect rare signatures in less than 1 percent of them.

Nik-Zainal and her colleagues also developed a new tool called FitMS to help clinicians and researchers identify mutational signatures in cancer patients