New study can determine whether someone has high risk of developing liver cancer

Exposure to fungal product, called aflatoxin, is believed to cause up to 80 percent of liver cancer cases in many parts of the world.

A new study by MIT researchers have developed a way to determine, by sequencing DNA of liver cells, whether those cells have been exposed to aflatoxin.

This profile of mutations could be used to predict whether someone has a high risk of developing liver cancer, potentially many years before tumours actually appear.

"What we're doing is creating a fingerprint," said John Essigmann, the William R. and Betsy P. Leitch Professor of Biological Engineering and Chemistry at MIT. "It's really a measure of prior exposure to something that causes cancer."

This approach could also be used to generate profiles for other common carcinogens, said Essigmann, who is the senior author of a paper describing the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.