01. 08. 2023
Reading time: 12 minutes
Veronika Vymetálková works at the Department of Molecular Biology of Cancer, where she tries to detect biomarkers in the blood of patients with colorectal cancer that could predict the return of cancer or resistance to treatment.
“We have discovered two specific microRNAs whose presence in patients’ blood can predict an early return of the disease. Our data showed that successfully treated patients had increasing levels of these two microRNAs, while those who did not respond to treatment still had low levels. We also found that the presence of elevated levels of ctDNA in patients’ blood, or specific mutations in it, indicates so-called minimal residual disease, a condition in which cancer cells are still present in the body, but their numbers are so small that they are undetectable by commonly used testing or imaging methods.”
You can read the full interview at www.vedavyzkum.cz (open in a new window – available only in Czech).