Scientists at The University of Manchester have identified some key factors that establish oesophageal cancer cells.

Professor Andy Sharrocks and his clinical collaborator Dr Yeng Ang led a team which used a new approach, looking for molecular signatures within the human genome which act as markers for cancer cells.

The signatures are able to define how the genes in oesophagus cancer are controlled and how this differs from normal oesophageal cells.

By using the information they identified which proteins are activated to drive oesophageal cancer.

The study was published in the journal PLOS Genetics and was funded through a Manchester Cancer Research Centre (MCRC) clinical training fellowship to the lead author, Ed Britton, from Cancer Research UK.

And thanks to the work, the scene is set for a new branch of research which may be able to develop leads for generating targeted drug therapies.

Professor Sharrocks said: “Oesophageal adenocarcinoma, a type of oesophageal cancer, has an abysmal survival rate, partly because it is poorly understood at the molecular level. Few, if any, targeted therapies exist.

“It presents late and patients have to endure a brutal chemotherapy treatment regime.

“There has been little progress in understanding this cancer over many years, so we believe this approach might represent a major step forward.”