In Search of the Drivers: Excavating Oral Cancer Genomes

Abstract

Cancer is a genetic disease. For any type of cancer – lung cancer,oral cancer, cervicalcancer, etc. - Only rarely does one encounter families in which multiple family members are affected with cancer. In other words, familial cancers are rare. Cancer is mostly sporadic. The hallmark of cancer is uncontrolled growth of cells. One of more DNA alterations in a normal cell leads to a growth advantage of the call, which then grows uncontrollably and abnormally to form a set of cells, called a clone, which forms a tumour. These DNA alterations occur mostly after an individual is born, and are called somatic alterations. Many DNA alterations that are present at birth, called germline alterations, can also predispose an individual to cancer. Genes which acquire somatic alterations and those alterations, called driver mutations, that provide the cell with a growth advantage and hence likely associated with cancer, have not been systematically catalogued and their functions investigated. In this talk, I shall explain the concept of evolution of cancers and the DNA changes involved in this evolutionary process. I shall then go on to describe our recent results on identifying the DNA changes that are associated with oral cancer. I shall then provide evidence to show that research in genetics and genomics has provided such deep understanding of cancers that genome-based treatment regimens have become the gold-standard of cancer control. Finally, I shall present a history of cancer research and a peek indo the future of genomic medicine in relation to cancer.