Scientists Map Cancer Genes; Personalized Treatments Could Be Next

In what some call a win in the war on cancer, scientists in England have for the first time managed to decipher and map cancer genomes, potentially paving the way for treatments tailored to individual patients. Full genomes for lung cancer and melanoma, a skin cancer, were mapped. "These are the two main cancers in the developed world for which we know the primary exposure," explains Professor Mike Stratton, from the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Lung cancer also has the highest mortality rate among cancers worldwide.