<b>The Cancer Genome Anatomy Project  [CGAP]

The National Institute of Health [NIH] has a clear explanation of CGAP.
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There is no one cancer gene.
All cancers start from one particular cell that mutates.  Its DNA changes [has mutations] so that the cell no longer grows in an orderly fashion according to the rules for its type.

The mutations are often "don't work" mutations, and if they occur to cancer suppressor genes,  like p53, then safeguards against having cells with damaged DNA no longer exist.  The p53 gene prevents cells with damaged DNA from reproducing, it makes them commit suicide.  If the p53 gene is damaged, then the cell CAN reproduce with damaged DNA. And the cell line from that cell can have more and more mutations, until enough occur so that a cancer develops.

Some of these mutations often create excess amounts of their protein product [an enzyme] in the cells.  The cells are said to "overexpress" these proteins.  

The CGAP will use microarrays to identify overexpressed proteins in the cancer cells.  Some of these overexpressed proteins are responsible for the cancer's behaviors, including growth, metastasizing, invasion of tissues.  If the overexpressed protein that controls growth and reproduction of that type of cancer cell is identified, a targeted agent can be developed that would fit INTO that protein and render it useless.  So the cancer couldn't grow.  And there would be CONTROL of the cancer. 

The cancer genome project is an attempt to do microarrays on all cancers in order to discover which proteins are  overexpressed, and driving the growth of the cancer cells.  When that is known, then drugs can be constructed to combine with those proteins and make them inactive... this is targeted treatment.  So cancers can be controlled.  

This is coming, and it is coming in the not too distant future.  We already have Gleevec for CKIT positive GIST.

If leiomyosarcoma has the same growth driver protein as another cancer...and that cancer has a targeted drug for it.... then we have a drug, too.  

If leiomyosarcoma has a protein that drives growth which would be inactivated by a drug already in existence, then we have a drug to use in this situation as well.   [An example would be LMS which is positive for PDGFr, which might benefit from use of Gleevec]  

<b>In summary, the cancer genome project is looking at all the proteins overexpressed in ALL cancers.  This means it would be possible to develop the drugs that will control the cancers.</b>
