Scientists decode deadly cancers: Report

“What you are seeing today is going to transform the way that we see cancer. This is a really fundamental moment in the history of cancer research,” said Professor Mike Stratton,who carried out the studies.

Scientists predict that by about 2020 all cancer patients could have their tumours analysed to find the genetic defects that drive them. This information would then be used to select the treatments most likely to work,The Times newspaper reported.

The Cambridge team,working with US academics,calculated that if the cancer takes an average of 50 years to develop,every 15 cigarettes bring a smoker one mutation closer to the disease.

The process could happen much more quickly,however,as no one can currently predict when the key “driver” mutations will occur.

Stratton,of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute,a world leading research centre in Cambridge said: “We have never seen cancer unveiled in this form before. It is like doing an archaeological excavation. We have got traces of all these processes from years before the cancer arose”.

Stratton,the lead researcher said this of mutations is telling us how the cancer developed and will inform us on prevention.

“I can envisage a time a decade or more hence when these catalogues will become routine,and influential in selecting treatment for that individual. That’s what we’re expecting every cancer patient will have one of these charts,” he was quoted as saying by the British daily.

Cancer is a disease of the genes. Environmental factors such as smoking,radiation or alcohol consumption

inflict DNA damage that causes cells to grow out of control.

The new maps,which are published in the journal Nature,plot this genetic chaos in unprecedented detail for the tumours of two cancer patients. One had small-cell lung cancer; the second had malignant melanoma,the deadliest form of skin cancer.

Such a detailed picture of the fundamental causes of the disease will lead to earlier detection,new breeds of drugs and better understanding of what causes the disease,scientists claim.

Eventually a simple blood test will lead to accurate “made to measure” treatments that can identify,attack and kill the causes of each patient’s own individual cancer,they claim.

All cancers are caused by damage or mutations to the DNA of formerly healthy cells acquired during a person’s lifetime.

This damage causes them to grow into abnormal lumps or tumours and spread around the body disrupting its normal processes and eventually if unchecked causing death. In lung cancer the damage is almost entirely caused by smoking and in skin cancer or malignant melanoma by ultra violent sunlight,the report in the British daily said.

Professor Peter Campbell,who led the lung cancer team,said: “These mutations are a bit like Russian roulette. Most of the time you will hit an empty chamber and cause a passenger mutation.

“But every now and again you will hit a bullet and cause a tumour.”