Scientists to map cancer's genetics

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

If all the ways genes run amok to cause cancer were laid out in a dictionary, scientists would be able to decipher only a small part of the first page.

Hoping to change that, the government is set to begin a $100 million pilot project to unravel the genetic makeup of cancer, aiming to speed the discovery of culprits and treatments that today is largely a matter of scientific luck.

The Cancer Genome Atlas will "go beyond and behind the front lines and enumerate the complete list of genomic insurgents that lead to cancer," said Dr. Francis Collins, the National Institutes of Health's genetics chief, in announcing the project's first phase yesterday.

The project will build "a powerful network of researchers, technologies and resources to tackle the cancer problem like it's never been tackled before," he said.

This is a far more complex project than research that mapped the human genome, a molecular blueprint for the human species. But technology now can track down the cascade of genetic changes required to spark any of the 200 diseases collectively called cancer -- knowledge crucial to developing better treatments, Dr. Collins said.

"You remember when people were skeptical that we could determine the genome of just one individual," said Dr. Collins, who helped direct that project. To map all the genes involved in cancer, "we're talking about basically thousands of Human Genome Projects."

But, "the time is right," he added. "We have the opportunity, because of advances in technology, to really look at the global nature of what is wrong with the cancer cell in a way that frankly we could not have dreamed of even a few years ago."

Scientists have discovered numerous genes that play a role in cancer. Sometimes a single genetic mutation is enough to spark a tumor, sometimes it just makes people more vulnerable to the disease. Other changes mean the difference between a fast-growing killer or a less dangerous tumor, or determining whether a particular treatment is likely to work.

Developing cancer usually involves about a dozen critical genetic alterations -- a domino effect -- that differ by malignancy, and scientists have uncovered only a fraction of them.

"There are certain rites of passage for all cancer cells," said Dr. Ronald DePinho of Harvard Medical School, a leading geneticist who said the new project should significantly speed the hunt for them. "The challenge of cancer is its complexity."