GENETICS AND GENOMICS OF CANCER

摘要

There have been dramatic advances in our understanding of the genetic and basis of many cancers. This information is helping to develop new drugs and therapies in appropriate patients and the use of this knowledge is improving the outcome of patients with cancer. At the beginning of this century, international public and private efforts provided the sequence of the entire human genome. Examination of the data revealed that the genome consists of less than 25,000 genes. The completion of the sequence of the first canonical human genome was estimated to have cost $2.5 billion. During the last 15 years, the cost of sequencing the human genome has decreased dramatically. Many other technologies for assessing gene expression, epigenetic modification of DNA, assessment of the levels of micro RNA, levels of long non-coding RNA and accurate determination of the levels of individual proteins have evolved and improved. The availability of these diverse technologies enabled the launch of several new programs to decipher the genetic and genomic makeup of all the common tumor types around the world.