Billion-Dollar Cancer Mapping Project Steps Forward

摘要

Leaders of an ambitious effort to find all common mutations in human cancers delivered their first results to a U.S. government panel last week along with a plain message: Their $100 million pilot is paying off. A sweeping search for mutations in one cancer-glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor-has verified known genes and turned up a few new ones, said lead presenter Eric Lander of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The data from DNA sequencing of tumors, combined with other genetic analyses, he said, are already pointing to potential new therapies to extend the lives of glioblastoma patients, who now rarely survive much longer than a year.