By Julie Bierach, KWMU
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kwmu/local-kwmu-642809.mp3
SAINT LOUIS, MO – The Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University is one of three in the country participating in the Cancer Genome Atlas Project.
The three-year pilot study seeks to go deep into the blueprint of the human genome to find clues as to what happens when we get cancer. Here in St. Louis, scientists are on the front lines of what's being called "a genome based war on cancer," accrording to Rick Wilson, director of the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University.
At first glance, Dr. Rick Wilson doesn't look like a scientist who plays a major role in cancer research. You'd expect him to wear a white lab coat and thick glasses.
Dr. Wilson looks cool in his kaki pants and bright colored shirt. His lab is taking part in a project that's expected to uncover some of the mysteries surrounding cancer, which for him is a dream come true.
"When I was in college, I read Jim Watson's book, Jim Watson, that guy who discovered the structure of DNA, and I said man I wanna work on DNA and if I ever got to the point where I could work on cancer and DNA, boy I'd be in heaven," said Wilson. "So right now I'm in heaven, this is really cool."
When Dr. Wilson talks about cancer there's a sense of urgency in his voice. That's no surprise considering a half a million people are expected to die from some form of it this year.
In his lab, Wilson and his team are using several machines to sequence the tumor DNA of patients with AML, Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. They take normal tissue samples from the patient and compare it with their tumor DNA to see what went wrong.
"Ultimately if we start to understand some of the nitty gritty things about what goes wrong in a particular type of cancer, that might help us develop drugs that are specifically targeted to the problems rather than just a drug that kills all currently growing cells in the body," says Wilson. "Those are the things that make the patients really sick."
For the Cancer Atlas, researchers are trying to find the "nitty gritty" things that go wrong in three cancers. Wilson describes them as some of the nastiest cancers around; a type of lung cancer, ovarian cancer, and a brain cancer, they're currently working on, called glioblastoma.
"Unfortunately it's one of the most difficult malignant tumors in the brain, in fact maybe of any tumors anywhere in the body," according to Dr. Michael Chicoine, a neurosurgeon at Washington University.
Dr. Chicoine is not involved with the Cancer Genome Atlas Project, but he's an expert on this form of brain cancer. He says they can treat glioblastoma very aggressively with radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. "But even with these aggressive treatments unfortunately this difficult tumor often continues to grow and often can take someone's life," said Chicoine. "And the survival from that can be as little as 6 to 12 months, so it's a challenging tumor."
Dr. Ramaswamy Govindan, is also a physician at Washington University. He's an expert on lung cancer. He too is not associated with the Cancer Genome Atlas, but agrees that understanding what genes play in cancer is the best bet in coming up with new treatments. He says, for instance, scientists have identified a gene that's important for organ function gets mutated in the tumors of 10 % of lung cancer patients.
"Because it gets mutated, it gets to be very active. And it's almost like your gas pedal in your car gets turned on, so it drives the cell to grow more and more and more and prevents the cancer cells from dying spontaneously," said Govindan.
Dr. Govindan says now there are a handful of drugs that can turn off the gene and slow down the cancer growth.
Back in the lab, Dr. Wilson is pointing out the numerous machines that are cranking out sequencing data for the AML tumors. He says they take the DNA from the patients' tumor, chop it up into little pieces and put it on a tiny microscope slide called a flow cell.
"Each one of these is sequencing about 40-million bits of DNA at a time," said Wilson. "And so what this does is, it actually makes little copies and grows it right on the microscope slide and then that goes into the sequencer and then off goes the sequencing."
Like the Human Genome project, the raw data generated by the sequencing machines goes directly to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, where it's put on-line for researchers.
The Cancer Genome Atlas is essentially the second phase of the Human Genome Project. Now that they've mapped the human genome, they hope to find out what goes wrong in our blueprint.
And hopefully, one day, figure out how to fix it.
The Washington University Genome Sequencing Center Website
The Cancer Genome Atlas Website
This story is made possible with support from The DNA Files, a project of SoundVision Production.
More information is available at www.dnafiles.org.