The Center for Cancer Genomics

Simon Powell, M.D., Ph.D., Director

Not every smoker gets lung cancer and not everyone who gets sunburned gets melanoma — even though these are established cancer risk factors. Part of the reason is that individuals have different genetic components that alter the effect of these outside influences.

The Center for Cancer Genomics aims to identify the genetic factors that play a role in cancer development and modify cancer risk. This information can lead to more accurate diagnosis of cancers and ways of predicting patients' response to cancer therapy as well as new, targeted anticancer therapies.

"The center brings together three components: the DNA sequencing capability of Genome Sequencing Center, valuable material resources of the Tissue Procurement and Tumor Bank and dedicated clinical faculty who translate basic research into clinical outcomes," says center director, Simon N. Powell, M.D., Ph.D., professor and head of radiation oncology. "We want to accelerate the way we do genetic linkage studies so that instead of identifying single genes that increase risk — such as the BRCA1 gene for breast cancer — we can pick up whole sets of genetic markers that are risk modifiers."

Classical genetic research looks for a gene associated with disease by analyzing inheritance patterns, but the current focus of gene studies is on genomics, rather than classical genetics approaches. Whole genome searches scan all the genetic material of individuals and allow researchers to look at the whole genome for potential genetic modifiers of cancer risk.

"An example of how this works would be the case of breast cancer and obstetric history," Powell says. "Past research has shown that women who have fewer than two children have a higher risk of breast cancer, but because other cofactors also play a role, obstetric history is only weakly predictive of whether a woman will get breast cancer. To better understand this, the center will study breast cancer patients whose obstetric history is well documented. We will conduct genome-wide analyses of each patient's DNA to look for the genetic variations that increase breast cancer development relative to obstetric history."

The discovery of new genetic variations that are important modifiers of cancer risk can become the foundation of new risk-reduction strategies.

Studying the genomics of patients with cancer is one approach to discovery, but another way to get more information about what causes cancer can come from cancer cells and their behavior. It's common for people to think that cancers like lung cancer, breast cancer and ovarian cancer, for example, are three different diseases. But in some ways they are similar — these epithelial cancers share some of the same changes in their growth pathways.

Cancer researchers now recognize that many cancers have identical changes in genes that affect cellular growth mechanisms. By identifying these mechanisms, center researchers hope to develop diagnostic tools that will improve cancer treatment and prognosis.

Genetic variations among different patients also influences how well an anticancer treatment works, so knowing which genetic changes are present in an individual's cancer could affect treatment choice. Center researchers plan to identify regions of the genome associated with either sensitivity or resistance to anticancer agents. Then patients' genes could help doctors select the most effective treatment.

"The new center will allow a comprehensive approach to the genetic factors that contribute to variations in the response to cancer therapy," Powell says. "This offers the prospect of making a major impact in this field."

Powell is confident that the center will open new doors in cancer research. "A revolutionary new capability — to sequence entire individual human genomes in a short time — is now a reality," Powell says. "Given the ability to scan entire genomes of tumor and normal tissue samples and then compare them to the reference human genome, the time is right to obtain this wealth of information."