WIKIMEDIA COMMONSTen years ago this month, on April 14, 2003—50 years after Watson and Crick’s publication of DNA’s double helical structure—leaders of the Human Genome Project announced that the sequence was “essentially complete,” with more than 99 percent decoded. The news, which came less than 3 years after the highly heralded draft sequence had been revealed, served to increase the feeling of certainty that a much clearer understanding of the immensely complicated biology of cancer would be forthcoming in the near future.
For the last 10 years, innovative advances in sequencing techniques have generated terabytes of publicly available omics data, and costs have now come down to levels that make genome-wide sequencing of individual cancer patients feasible. Big science on steroids. The information derived from cancer genomics has begun to nudge open the door to truly personalized treatment, but it has also revealed that science will need a very fine-toothed comb to assess the effects of the many mutations within different tumor types and across different cancers.
In this issue of The Scientist, we take a look at some of the ways cancer researchers and clinicians are tackling a number of the disease’s still-refractory aspects. “Models of Transparency” details why the zebrafish, long a standard model for ...
