On the Horizon: Genome Project Holds Promise for Science
and
Cancer
Care
(On the Horizon is a periodic column, by Memorial
Sloan-Kettering
President Harold Varmus. This article
provides his perspective on the
Human Genome Project and
its
ramifications for research and cancer
care.)
Decoding the human genome -- the genetic blueprint of a
human
being -- will eventually lead to new ways to prevent,
diagnose, and treat
cancer and other diseases. Scientists
from the public Human Genome Project
and the private Celera
Genomics Corporation announced last June that they
had
assembled a working draft of some 85 percent of the human
genome,
generating debate about how this information could
benefit mankind. Most
immediately, Dr. Varmus predicts that
there will be significant advances in
the way scientific
research is conducted. The tools developed during
the
human
genome project to analyze sequence information and to
probe
functional significance of individual genes will expedite
biomedical
research and accelerate the pace at which
scientific data are
generated. In time, it may become
possible to use genetic information
to diagnose cancers
more
accurately and to identify people with an
increased risk of
the disease.
http://www.mskcc.org/patients_n_public/lately_novdec_2000/genome.cfm
