Cancer, melanoma genomes: A story we missed
I missed an important story last week, and so did most of the English-language news media on both sides of the Atlantic.
According to a story by Catharine Paddock for Medical News Today, researchers in England have sequenced the genomes of melanoma and small-cell lung cancer.
Thanks to Victor McElheny, former director of the Knight Fellowhips at MIT, for calling my attention to the story, which was based on research published in Nature last week.
“Both papers came largely from the Sanger Institute outside Cambridge, and got big play in London, little so far over here,” Vic wrote in an email. I’d challenge him on that a bit–I didn’t find a whole lot of play in England, either, although he’s right, it got more attention there than here.
This seems to be a very important development in cancer research, and it should have been front-page news. If you don’t agree, consider one interesting implication of the lung-cancer genome. According to Paddock’s story, the researchers found 23,000 mutation in the lung cancer cells. That works out to about one mutation per pack of cigarettes.
That’s so stunning I feel the need to say it again. A pack-a-day smoker adds one mutation to his genome every day. A lot of those land in places where there is no gene and they can do no damage. But would you like to fire a hole in your genome every day and hope for the best? Smokers are playing a more serious game of genetic Russian roulette than they realize.
That fact alone, aside form the importance of the basic science, should have attracted the attention of the news media.
As I said, I admit that I missed this story, too. Perhaps we’ve all written so many stories about so many genomes that we’re becoming jaded. We ought to struggle against that. We don’t want to miss too many like this.
- Paul Raeburn
December 21st, 2009 at 7:28 am
Actually, got ridiculously huge play here in ENgland with stupid, misleading front page headlines about major advances in cancer treatment or even the c-word cure. I actually think it should have been underplayed–it’s _another_ cancer genome paper that outlines a lot of info/mutations but doesn’t provide any immediate new understanding or drug leads. This is good solid work but will take a long time to turn into something tangible.
–john travis
December 21st, 2009 at 2:44 pm
John,
Thanks for the view from abroad regarding coverage. I of course agree that this isn’t anything close to a cure, but it’s probably an important step on the path to a cure. It appeals to me as an apparent solid piece of science, and because of the newsy angle that it could help explain how smoking causes lung cancer or ultraviolet radiation causes melanoma.
If I were covering it myself, I wouldn’t, however, rely on my own judgment on those matters. I’d call a few people and ask ‘em if it was as important as it seems to me, and then proceed accordingly.
Paul
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:14 am
A word more on why I thought the story on sequencing melanoma and lung cancer cells worth attention. The Sanger papers are part of a larger trend that involves major expenses several big sequencing centers. Key efforts are The Cancer Genome Atlas in te U.S., and, abroad, the International Cancer Genome Consortium, coordinated at the Ontario Cancer Research Center in Toronto. President Obama, at the end of September, went to Bethesda to announce major new support ($175 million) for the Cancer Genome Atlas project. An obvious major factor is the plunging cost of sequencing, which can be taken as $300 million for a complete human sequence in 2000 to perhaps $30,000 per human sequence today, a 10,000-fold drop in less than 10 years (with further cuts just ahead) (perhaps the steepest drop in the history of all technology). We need to pay attention to the companies that are pressing the technologies of sequencing: Illumina, 454, Life Technologies, Helicos, Complete Genomics, Pacific Biosciences, Oxford Nanopore, IBM, etc. This is not just for the business pages. On cancer genomes, a major step occurred in 2008, with the complete sequencing at Washington University of a woman who died of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), followed just months later by a second Wash U sequence of a man who is in remission from AML. The first achievement was published in a special issue of Nature in November 2008. Another factor here is that the DNA chips so widely used to genotype people don’t catch the details of causation that are open to sequencing of target areas or the whole genome. Reporters should really be watching the march of sequencing to the bedside. It’s not just hype to feed the machines at the big sequencing centers.