Cancer gene maps decoded!

December 18th, 2009 11:41 am by Sandman

Vawin Mumbai Times of India front page a mi…

TOI: Expect early detection, better drugs for lung, skin cancer

The scientists sequenced all the DNA from both tumour tissue and normal tissue from a melanoma patient and a lung cancer patient using a technology called massively parallel sequencing. By comparing the cancer sequences with the healthy ones, they were able to pick up all the changes specific to cancer.

The lung tumour carried more than 23,000 mutations and the melanoma had more than 33,000.

Peter Campbell, also of the Sanger Institute, said the lung cancer study suggests a typical smoker develops one mutation for every 15 cigarettes smoked and the damage starts with the first puff. Lung cancer kills around 1 million people worldwide each year and 90% cases are caused by smoking.

“The is the first glimpse of the future of cancer medicine, not only in the laboratory, but eventually in the clinic,” Director Mark Walport said.

Meizial zu te tan chuan lawm tur nge sim tur ni ang?