This year revealed just how much scientists have learned about the disease, from how animals become naturally cancer-resistant to how tumor cells harness extracellular DNA to develop rapid drug resistance.

Tumors contain thousands of genetic changes, but only a few are actually cancer-causing. A quicker way to identify these driver mutations could lead to more targeted cancer treatments.

Personal drug regimens based on xenograft mice harboring a single patient’s tumor still need to prove their true utility in medicine.

By combining two innovative approaches, researchers can now sequence the full spectrum of mutational differences between individual cells’ genomes.

Courtesy of Vasudeva Mahavisno  CANCER CARTOGRAPHY: Metastatic prostate cancer from a tissue array stained for EZH2 protein. The background represents gene expression signatures of prostate cancer as a heat map, which lead to the discovery of EZH2 as a prostate cancer biomarker. As soon as Watson and Crick deduced DNA's structure half a century ago, their thoughts turned to RNA. Arguably the most important molecule in the living world, RNA not only connects gene to protein, but its catal

Critics point out that cell therapy has yet to top existing treatments. Biotech companies are setting out to change that—and prove that the technology can revolutionize medicine.

A neurologist by training, Stefánsson founded Iceland-based deCODE Genetics to explore what the human genome can tell us about disease and our species’ evolution.

Virus-Disease Links Are Hard to Forge Researchers confront skepticism, conflicting results, limited funding By Douglas Steinberg If genomics is glitzy nowadays, virus research is, well, gritty. Its latest heyday, when HIV was shown to cause AIDS, only masked its true nature. Associating viruses with diseases has always been particularly difficult and labor intensive. Cause-and-effect relationships are maddeningly elusive.1 Consider the following two questions: Does infection by mouse mammary

THE TRIPLETS OF CELLVILLE:(Reprinted with permission from G.A. Pihan et al., Cancer Res, 63: 1398–404, 2003)When stained with a biotinylated probe specific for the chromosome 8 centromere, diploid cells from normal human uterine cervix (A), breast (C), and prostate (E) tissue show two signals. Aneuploid cells from carcinoma tissues in situ (B, D, and F) each have three or more signals.About 70 scientists recently attended an invitation-only California premiere tinged with controversy. But

An open mind and collaborative spirit have taken Hans Clevers on a journey from medicine to developmental biology, gastroenterology, cancer, and stem cells.