In an effort to target the right patients, genetic screening is becoming more common in clinical trials. But incorporating it can be complex and add a significant burden for both patients and clinical trial sites. Genetic counseling can streamline that process and help drug and gene therapy developers expedite the recruitment of genetically-eligible participants for their trials and use genetic testing results to accelerate the speed and success of clinical trials.
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions investigated for the first time in cancer the association between two sources of genetic variation: germline or inherited structural variation, which refers to large differences in the DNA sequence, and DNA methylation, which is when genes are turned on or off without altering the DNA code.
