Chennai. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have succeeded in developing a device to detect cancerous tumors in the brain and spinal cord. These devices, known as the Glio Blastoma Multiforme Driver (GBM Drivers), are available for purchase online.
Glioblastoma is a rapidly growing and aggressive tumor of the brain and spinal cord, said a release issued by IITM on Monday. Although research has been done to understand this tumor, medical options for its diagnosis are limited due to the survival time of the patient less than two years after the initial diagnosis.
GBM Driver was developed specifically to identify driver mutations and passenger mutations (passenger mutation neutral mutation) in glioblastoma. A variety of factors such as amino acid properties, di- and tri-peptide motifs, conservation scores, and position specific scoring matrices (PSSMs) were taken into account in developing this web server.
This study, which analyzed glioblastoma, included 9,386 driver mutations and 8728 passenger mutations. Driver mutations in glioblastoma were identified in a blinded set of 1,809 mutants with an accuracy of 81.99 percent, which is superior to existing computational methods. This method is completely dependent on the protein sequence. The research was led by Prof. M. Michael Gromiha, Department of Biotechnology, IIT-Madras.
His team includes Medha Pandey, PhD student, IIT-Madras, and two IIT-Madras alumni, Dr. P. Anusha, currently at The Ohio State University, Columbus, and Dr. Dhanush Yesudas, currently at the US National Institutes of Health. The findings of this research have been published in the well-known General Bioinformatics. Talking about this research, Prof. Gromiha said, “We have created cancer.
characterized the amino acids that recognize the causative mutations, and achieved the highest accuracy of distinguishing between driver and neutral mutations. We hope that this tool (GBM driver) can help in prioritizing driver mutations in glioblastoma and aid in identifying potential therapeutic targets, thus helping in developing drug design strategies. The methods and tools used can be used for other diseases as well. PC: UNITED NEWS OF INDIA
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