Major milestone reached in effort to ID cancers’ genetic roots - 33 types detected

Researchers nationwide have reached a major milestone in describing the genetic landscape of cancer. Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other institutions have completed the genetic sequencing and analyses of more than 11,000 tumors from patients, spanning 33 types of cancer — all part of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project, funded by the National Cancer Institute and National Human Genome Research Institute, both of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Altogether, the researchers identified about 300 genes that drive tumor growth. And, remarkably, just over half of all tumors analyzed carry genetic mutations that could be targeted by therapies already approved for use in patients.

TCGA was launched in 2005 to pursue the genetic basis of cancer. The results appear April 5 in a series of studies published in Cell Press journals.

“For the 10,000 tumors we analyzed, we now know — in detail — the inherited mutations driving cancer and the genetic errors that accumulate as people age, increasing the risk of cancer,” said leading TCGA scientist Li Ding, associate professor of medicine and director of computational biology in the Division of Oncology at Washington University. “This is the first definitive summary of the genetics behind 33 major types of cancer.”

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