Clapper, Patti, Schweizer and Mason

Researchers from the University of Pisa in Italy hit a roadblock while examining the effect of mesothelioma on the human genome.  They were investigating the specific effect of mesothelioma on individual genes in hopes of opening up a new vector for mesothelioma research.  They suspected that by identifying which genes mesothelioma interfered with, they could either identify a new method of diagnosis or perhaps a novel avenue for treatment research.  However, after pawing through mountains of data and dissecting numerous studies, their efforts were undercut by the finicky authors of these invaluable studies.

The project in question was a joint research endeavor between the departments of Biology, Endocrinology and Metabolism, Orthopedics and Traumatology, Occupational Medicine, Experimental Pathology, Medical Biotechnology, and Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Pisa.  The students were looking retrospectively at studies authored by other researcher in the field of mesothelioma treatment in hopes to find relational data between mesothelioma and specific genes.  However, they discovered that many of these studies either lacked specific information that should have been included, or lacked a common vocabulary with which to compare them. 

Indeed, in their conclusions the Italian researchers stated that “In gathering this information, we noticed that no uniform criteria exist in describing the used materials and methods or in presenting the microarray results.  In fact, some papers [18] disclosed only the number or a reduced list of differentially expressed genes considered interesting by the authors, in other cases [19] the information concerning the used microarray platform was only approximate.”

In addition, the secrecy employed by some of these authors further hindered their research.  “. . . not all the studies make the raw data available by public repositories.  In order to retrieve missing or unclear data, specific information was requested to the corresponding authors of the manuscripts or to the microarray suppliers.”

This “tail-chasing” ate up valuable time and resources when the study was already operating under pressure. 

This sort of thing is far from uncommon.  The medical research surrounding mesothelioma, and cancer in general, is far from uniform.  There are large gaps in the data and a lot of work has to be put into analyzing results between two desperate studies.

And the Italian research was also hobbled by the precocious nature of other researchers.  When examining raw data, the Italians found that “only the most relevant findings of microarray studies are usually reported in literature.”

That meant that even if the previous experiment did uncover some insight into the workings of an individual gene, if it didn’t pertain to the author’s conclusion or aid in proving/disproving their hypothesis, it was often discarded.

In the end, the Italian study was successful in identifying several genes which are directly affected by mesothelioma but the amount of effort they were forced to put into the research was excessive.  In a digital age, it is almost unthinkable that some of the methodology behind the most important mesothelioma research is so flawed.