New weapon in battle against cancer already shows startling success
“It is now conceivable that our children and our children’s children will know the term cancer only as a constellation of stars,” President Clinton told Tony Blair in a joint announcement.
And Mr Blair called the completion of the human genome – 3bn chemical “letters” which spell out all the human genes – a “breakthrough that opens the way for massive advances.” It was a day of glory for thousands of scientists who had worked on the project in Britain, France, Germany, Japan, China and the US.
And the news was greeted with delight by researchers everywhere.
“Today is the day in which the scientific community hands over its gift of the human genome sequence to humanity.
This is a gift that is very delicate, very fragile, very beautiful,” said Mike Stratton, head of the cancer genome project at the Sanger Centre in Cambridge.
“With the handover of this fragile gift, we are also entrusting responsibility – responsibility to use it for the benefit of mankind, and not to misuse it.”
Cancer experts have begun a complete catalogue of the DNA changes in cancer cells in the hope of totally new treatments and methods of prevention for one of the western world’s biggest killers.
There could be 20 such genes in one cancer. There are 200 kinds of cancer. So far, researchers have counted about 100 genes with tiny mutations in their DNA.
“We have seen, in the last few months, the development of drugs targeted at abnormal genes and their proteins in cancer cells, and these drugs, some of them, have worked beyond our wildest expectations,” said Dr Stratton, as British scientists passed a milestone in the understanding of the machinery of life. Cancer was the consummate disease of DNA, he said. From birth, the DNA in the 100 million million cells of any human were assaulted by chemicals, radiation and viruses.
The study of tumours had begun to reveal the genetic changes that turned cells cancerous. One dramatic advance was against chronic myeloid leukaemia, a slow-burning disease which can suddenly turn lethal.
It began with the disruption of the chromosomes which ended with two genes fusing together – and making an unusual protein which triggered the cancer.
Scientists identified a drug that would work against the protein, and began the usual “phase one” toxicity trials – on a group of very sick people for whom all other therapies had failed.
“To all our surprise and particularly theirs, 31 out of 31 people in this phase one trial went into remission,” Dr Stratton said. “That is an extraordinary thing: all, in that first run, went into remission. So now, obviously, the drug is being taken through the other processes of trialling, rather quickly, one expects.”
It will be years before the hard-won knowledge from the human genome project is translated into new, precise treatments tailored for both the disease and the patient.
But scientists were in no doubt of its ultimate potential.
It could lead to new treatments for a host of conditions, including child birth defects, skin diseases, muscular dystrophy, neurodegenerative diseases and cardiovascular conditions.
“A few months ago I compared the project to the invention of the wheel,” said Dr Mike Dexter of the Wellcome Trust, which financed the British effort.
“On reflection it is more than that. I can well imagine technology making the wheel obsolete.
But this code is the essence of mankind, and as long as humans exist, this code is going to be important and will be used.”
He spoke as American colleagues gathered for a joint declaration with the controversial Craig Venter, of Celera Genomics, who threatened to beat British and American government scientists to the prize, and who provoked a storm over questions of the ownership of the genome.
But he, too, saw ultimate victory over cancer. “Each day approximately 2,000 die in America from cancer,” Dr Venter said.
“There’s at least the potential to reduce the number of cancer deaths to zero during our lifetimes.”
Dr Venter’s entry into the field initially provoked furious exchanges, yesterday tactfully barely mentioned in the euphoria. But one of the giants of DNA, James Watson, who won the Nobel prize for deciphering the structure of DNA in 1953, writes in the Guardian today: “To our vast relief, the publicly supported effort received not less but more money. Our backers want to ensure that all the essential features of the human genome are available without cost to all the people of the world.
The events of the past few weeks have shown that those who work for the public good do not necessarily fall behind those driven by personal gain.”
Posts
