Health Desk- 9 Feb,
2020: More than a thousand scientists have built the most detailed picture
of cancer ever in a landmark study.
They said cancer was like a 100,000-piece jigsaw, and that
until today, 99% of the pieces were missing. Their studies, published in the
journal Nature, provide an almost complete picture of all cancers.
They could allow treatment to be tailored to each patient's
unique tumour, or develop ways of finding cancer earlier.
The Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium analysed
the whole genetic code of 2,658 cancers.
A cancer is a corrupted version of our own healthy cells -
mutations to our DNA change our cells until eventually they grow and divide
uncontrollably.
Most of our understanding of this process comes from the
sets of genetic instructions for building the body's proteins.
"That's a mere 1% of the whole genome," said Dr
Lincoln Stein from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.
He said doctors would be "in the dark" when
treating around a third of patients, as it was impossible to tell why their
cells had become cancerous. It has taken teams in 37 countries more than a
decade to figure out what the 99% were doing.
Courtesy: BBC
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