U.S. to fund mapping of cancer-linked genes

The United States plans to spend $100 million to explore the feasibility of mapping all of the genetic changes linked to cancer, federal officials said at the National Press Club in Washington Tuesday.

The National Cancer Institute and the National Human Genome Research Institute said they will each provide $50 million over three years on the pilot phase of the Cancer Genome Atlas, as the study is known. The pilot phase will explore two or three forms of cancer and researchers said they hope eventually to look at more than 200 forms of the disease.

"It is now possible to envision a systematic effort to map the changes in the human genetic blueprint associated with all known forms of cancer," said Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, which comprises the cancer and human genome agencies and others.

Basic maps of the human genome already exist. Researchers want to map genes from cancer tumors to identify differences between them and normal cells. Such knowledge may lead to new tests to detect cancer, to new therapies, and ultimately to "new strategies to prevent cancer," Zerhouni said.

The forms of cancer to be explored in the study's pilot phase haven't been named, said Geoff Spencer, a spokesman for the National Cancer Institute.

The full Cancer Genome Atlas would be the largest gene- mapping effort ever undertaken, said Anna Barker, deputy director of the National Cancer Institute, in a telephone interview. The previous Human Genome Project, an international effort led by the U.S., was completed in April 2003.

"The cancer project scales up to well over 100 Human Genome Projects," Barker said. Just the pilot program will involve mapping more genes than the original Human Genome Project did, she said.