The genetic code for two tumor types have been cracked by scientists at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, Baltimore, USA. The scientists were surprise they managed to identify 189 genes that cause breast and colon cancer after taking tissue samples from 11 breast and 11 colon cancer patients, as they had only expected to find about 20.

You can read about these findings in the journal Science.

Most of the altered genes they identified were not known to be genetically altered in tumors.

This breakthrough in cancer research could lead to new medications and tests that could eventually save over one million lives worldwide each year. The researchers said that this work will spur breast and colon cancer research for the next several decades.

Already, some insight has been gained. The reason some patients respond better to a given drug than others is because there are so many different genes involved in these two tumor types, say the scientists.

Prof. Victor Velculescu, one of the authors of the report, said "We know these mutated genes affect different parts of certain cell processes. As we learn more about how these genes work in cancer, we may be able to develop drugs that target a smaller number of pathways than all of the genes together."

Although they found around 90 mutated genes in each tumor, the scientists say tumor development in each one was mainly influenced by about 20 of them. By identifying which genes have mutated, and how, doctors will one day be able to prescribe medications tailor-made for each patient.

Velculescu said the day will come when we see cancer as a disease that that needs to be treated in an individualized way. He said cancer treatment is not a question of using a single silver bullet. He stressed that this new research is the basis for future investigations, and not a short step from imminent therapies.

"The Consensus Coding Sequences of Human Breast and Colorectal Cancers"
Tobias Sj?blom, Si?n Jones, Laura D. Wood, D. Williams Parsons, Jimmy Lin, Thomas Barber, Diana Mandelker, Rebecca J. Leary, Janine Ptak, Natalie Silliman, Steve Szabo, Phillip Buckhaults, Christopher Farrell, Paul Meeh, Sanford D. Markowitz, Joseph Willis, Dawn Dawson, James K. V. Willson, Adi F. Gazdar, James Hartigan, Leo Wu, Changsheng Liu, Giovanni Parmigiani, Ben Ho Park, Kurtis E. Bachman, Nickolas Papadopoulos, Bert Vogelstein, Kenneth W. Kinzler, Victor E. Velculescu
Published Online September 7, 2006
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1133427
Click Here To View Abstract Online