European researchers have made a breakthrough paving the way for the development of precision treatments that can destroy cancers at source.
Until now the similarity between cancer cells and healthy cells has made destroying one while protecting the other tough. But a new method developed by teams from the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) overcomes the challenge by allowing scientists to make the distinction based on the cells genetics and gene expression. Called MutaSeq, the game changing method relies on single cell sequencing, which is where scientists can gather detailed information from thousands of individual cells.