Genome allows scientiststo pinpoint cancer causes

LONDON, June 26: Cancer is one of the world's biggest killers but British scientists believe the completion of the working draft of the hu...

LONDON, June 26: Cancer is one of the world’s biggest killers but British scientists believe the completion of the working draft of the human genome will have a profound impact on the battle against the disease. The much-anticipated mapping of 97 per cent of the genes in humans that was announced on Monday will allow scientists to pinpoint the causes and best treatment of cancer.

"It would seem to me inconceivable that within 20 to 30 years the treatment of cancer has not been transformed on the basis of the discovery of the human genome," Dr Mike Stratton, the head of Britain’s Cancer Genome Project, told Reuters. Instead of comparing normal and diseased organs and cells, the so-called map of life unlocks the door to a new level of anatomy the DNA of human genes. "Cancer is the pre-eminent disease of DNA," explained Stratton. "The basic hardware of a cancer is in the DNA."The cancer geneticist, who was one of the scientists who identified the BRCA2 breast cancer gene, is the head of a project that is using data from the Human Genome Project to identify the genes that cause cancer.

By comparing normal DNA with DNA in cancerous cells he hopes to pinpoint the starting point of cancers and to devise new drug treatments directed specifically at abnormal genes.

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"We’re taking genes from cancer cells and in a systematic way looking for differences between cancer genes and the normal genes," he explained. "The differences will be in the genes driving the cancerous cells." With 200 types of cancer and maybe 20 abnormal genes in any given cancer, and an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 genes in the human body, Stratton and his team have their work cut out for them.

To begin with they are targeting the biggest cancer killers lung, breast, prostate, ovarian and colorectal which cause millions of deaths each year."Cancer is caused by abnormalities in DNA. Over a lifetime cells in the adult body acquire changes in their DNA sequence due to exposure to chemicals, viruses and radiation," he added.

Most of those changes don’t make any difference in the cells but when the right set of changes occurs in the correct subset of genes cancer develops."The aim of our project is to attempt to look for these changes in cancer cells. We are empowered to do this by the advent of the normal human genome sequence which will tell us where all the genes are, where all the bits of the genes that code the protein, the working parts of the body, are," said Stratton.

"This is a time of enormous hope," he added.