Search Here

The New York Times is reporting that research by more than 200 scientists may have found "genetic vulnerabilities that could lead to powerful new treatments."

Researchers hope that drugs designed to strike these weak spots will eventually stop a cancer that is now almost inevitably fatal once it has spread.

The NYT said that more scientists are now seeing cancer as a genetic disease defined not so much by where it starts - colon, liver, brain, breast - but by genetic aberrations that are its Achilles' heel. They caution that most of the drugs needed to target the colon cancer mutations have yet to be developed, but they say they are building the road map that they hope will lead them to new treatments.

About 150,000 Americans receive a diagnosis of colon or rectal cancer each year, and about 50,000 die annually from the disease.

The colon cancer study is part of the $100-million-a-year Cancer Genome Atlas project, and is pulished in the journal Nature. The results are based on a study of 224 tumors. 

Click to read the full article from the New York Times.