For the first time, scientists have deciphered the genetic code of cancer and found a series of genetic mutations that can cause it or promote its development. The scientists worked with cells donated by a 50-year-old woman who died of leukemia, sequenced the DNA of the cancer cells and compared it to the DNA sequence of her normal skin cells, then pinpointed 10 mutations that occur only in cancer cells, which apparently stimulate abnormal cell proliferation and inhibit their normal growth, allowing the cells to resist chemotherapy. The researchers claim that the findings, while not immediately applicable to patients, offer new therapeutic approaches and can certainly help doctors choose the best approach among existing treatment options based on a more detailed genomic profile of cancer patients. Although the study is based on leukemia only, it can be applied to other cancer areas. Richard K. Wilson, director of the Genome Sequencing Center at the University of Washington, said, “This is the first time such a large number of whole cancer genomes have been sequenced, and it gives us a lot of clues as to what happens to DNA when cancer breaks out.” Mutations – which are kind of genetic mistakes – are not innate, but occur later in life, and many of them cause cancer. (Only 5-10 percent of cancers are acquired hereditarily.) The new study aims to find the full range of mutation loci in a particular cancer area through whole-genome DNA sequencing, a significant departure from previous studies that have rarely addressed genes. The study took several months and cost $1million, and current advances in technology make analyzing tens of thousands of DNA fragments much cheaper, easier and faster. Dr. Wilson hopes that in the next five to 20 years, the entire genome of a patient’s cancer will be sequenced on a microchip, and that patients will be able to test the results via computer with a drop of blood to see which drug treatment is most effective. He says, “It’s a personalized genome sequence, comparable to a personalized medicine kit, and while that seems difficult, it’s not impossible.” So far, most work studying mutations in cancer genes has focused on so many hundreds of genes already suspected to be involved in cancer, rather than 20,000 or the whole human genome sequence. Past research has been valuable, but there are many more mutations that we don’t know about or didn’t anticipate, and then, we miss the opportunity to study them. In fact, eight of the 10 mutations identified this time would not have been detected using traditional research methods. Cancer expert Dr. Sloan-Ketterin, director of the Hematology Service at Memorial Sloan-Ketterin Cancer Center, was not involved in the study that became a Tour de France and a perfect report. nimer said that whole-genome sequencing, in addition to leukemia, is also in other cancer It provides a lot of important information for research. Nimer added that it will be very gratifying to hear similar news for the patients we are dealing with. It also predicts that oncologists will begin to look for mutated loci in their patients or collect samples from previous patients to anticipate the course of cancer or to choose better treatments. Cancer genomic research has become a major area of research. In the past few years, the government has invested $100 million in genomic research on lung cancer, ovarian cancer, and glioblastoma (a type of brain tissue tumor). The woman who donated cells to the University of Washington is not only the first cancer patient to donate cells, but also the first female patient to have her entire genome sequence deciphered. Her genomic information is only available to scientists for research purposes and will not be released to protect the privacy of the individual and her family. So far, other full genome sequences for scholarly research have come from two male scientists, James D. Watson and J. Craig Venter, known for their ego and intelligence, who have decoded their own genomic DNA and made it available for all research.