WASHINGTON — The National Institutes of Health announced a plan Tuesday to identify genetic mutations linked to human tumors, research that officials said would give Americans hope "of not having to die of a disease like cancer."
By mapping genes in hundreds of samples of cancerous tissue, NIH officials said it will be possible to identify combinations of mutations associated with specific types of cancers.
That will allow development of faster diagnostic tools and precise, targeted drugs that are far more effective than current therapies, they said.
National Cancer Institute Director Andrew C. von Eschenbach predicted that the project will eventually remove the fear from one of the most frightening phrases in the English language: "You have cancer."
"Our purpose today is to begin to turn the fear of cancer — actually Americans' greatest fear — into a future not only free of fear, but filled with hope and the expectation of not having to die of a disease like cancer," Von Eschenbach said.
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"This is truly a historic day for cancer patients," said Anna D. Barker, deputy director of NCI. "I think this is a revolutionary project. It is a turning point in biomedical research. It is a turning point in medicine. It is a turning point in cancer research."
She emphasized that she believed discoveries from the systematic genetic analyses could appear soon enough to help some people currently struggling with the disease.
One of every two American men and one of every three women develop cancer.
NCI and the National Human Genome Research Institute will each spend $50 million over the next three years to fund a pilot project designed to demonstrate the feasibility of mapping genes associated with cancer, officials said.
They said the pilot program will concentrate on the genetic makeup of a handful of cancer types — possibly as few as two or three, which are still to be determined.
"More than 300 genes have been implicated in the diabolical transformation of normal cells into cancer cells, and that has led to major insights into cause, prevention, diagnosis, treatment and cure," said Francis Collins, director of the genome institute.
"But we are still working with an incomplete atlas," he added. "It is time to bring full power of genomics to bear on the problem of cancer."
As cancer-related mutations are identified and mapped, the information will be placed in a public database, available free to researchers, Collins said.
Although cancer experts believed as recently as 40 years ago that genetic factors were not involved in cancer, they now know that mutations play a central role in the disease. More than 200 different types of cancer have been identified, and each may involve scores of unique mutations, experts say.
This realization, and the successful identification of specific mutant genes involved in certain cancers, have led to the development of several new drugs, such as Herceptin for some forms of breast cancer and Iressa for some lung cancers.
But these drugs are not effective for many cancer victims, probably because other genetic mutations also underlie the growth of cancer.
In fact, as many as 100 genetic aberrations may be involved in a single cancer, said Harvard University cancer geneticist Ronald A. DePinho.
Years of effort by teams of investigators have resulted in identifying only five to 15 mutations for any given tumor type, and it is "clear that we are dealing with the tip of the iceberg," he said.
DePinho appeared at the press conference with Von Eschenbach, Collins, NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, and other officials and cancer researchers.
The project has been named "the Cancer Genome Atlas," a designation Collins said was chosen partly because its initials TCGA are the same letters used for the chemicals that make up the genetic code of humans and all other life.
Collins said the project would be more complex than mapping the human genome, a feat his agency and the private organization, the Institute for Genomic Research, announced jointly in 2002.
To reduce the complexity, initial work will concentrate on regions of the human genome known to be associated with cancer, rather than remapping the entire genetic code hundreds of times for each cancer type, said an NIH spokeswoman.
