PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

12-Dec-2013

Contact: Jim Ritter jritter@lumc.edu 708-216-2445 Loyola University Health System

MAYWOOD, IL. A newly improved internet research tool is helping cancer researchers and physicians make sense out of a deluge of genetic data from nearly 100,000 patients and more than 50,000 mice.

The tool, called the Gene Expression Barcode 3.0, is proving to be a vital resource in the new era of personalized medicine, in which cancer treatments are tailored to the genetic makeup of an individual patient's tumor.

Significant new improvements in the Gene Expression Barcode 3.0 are reported in the January issue of the journal Nucleic Acids Research, published online ahead of print.

Senior author is Michael J. Zilliox of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Zilliox is co-inventor of the Gene Expression Barcode.

"The tool has two main advantages," Zilliox said. "It's fast and it's free."

The Gene Expression Barcode is available at a website http://barcode.luhs.org/ designed and hosted by Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. The website is receiving 1,600 unique visitors per month.

Knowing how a patient's cancer genes are expressed can help a physician devise an individualized treatment. In a tumor cell, for example, certain genes are turned on (expressed) while other genes are turned off (unexpressed). Also, different types of cancer cells have different patterns of gene expression. Genes are expressed through RNA, a nucleic acid that acts as a messenger to carry out instructions from DNA for making proteins.

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Helping cancer researchers make sense of the deluge of genetic data

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