A team of researchers from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a software that can help reveal the relationships between RNA modifications and the development of diseases and disorders.

The scientists have devised ModTect, a new computational software that can identify RNA modifications using pre-existing sequencing data from clinical cohort studies.

With ModTect, the team carried out their own novel pan-cancer study covering 33 different cancer types. They found associations between these RNA modifications and the different survival outcomes of cancer patients.

The software will be publicly available on Github for other scientists to use.

The team is hopeful that their contribution will help further research that establishes any potential causal or mechanistic relationships between RNA modifications and tumour formation.