An international team led by a Boston researcher yesterday unveiled the most detailed look ever at the genetic ravages inside a lung tumor, finding at least one target for drug research and laying the foundation for an ambitious - and controversial - federal effort to identify all the DNA damage that causes major cancers...Writes DFMC program head, Jan Ross: "Dr. Meyerson, is a Dana-Farber scientist and former Barr Investigator whose early research efforts in this area were funded by DFMC." Those of you who have contributed to DFMC in the past should take a moment to smile with great hope.
...the researchers - including scientists from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - said their study validates a new approach to fighting the nation's number two killer: systematically identifying genetic changes that turn healthy cells cancerous, in hopes of finding cancer's weaknesses. The study serves as a pilot project for the federal government's proposed 10-year, $1.5 billion research program to map the genetic blueprint of the 50 most lethal cancers.
"You ain't seen nothin' yet," said Dr. Matthew Meyerson of Dana-Farber and the Broad who is the lead author of the paper posted online yesterday by the science journal Nature. "The potential for finding things that will help cancer patients is so great. This absolutely gives me much more confidence that we should go forward" with similar research in other types of cancer.
Want to fund the next Meyerson? Go here.
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