# More Than a Thousand Scientists Have Built the Most Detailed Picture of Cancer Ever

**URL:** <https://onehack.st/t/more-than-a-thousand-scientists-have-built-the-most-detailed-picture-of-cancer-ever/68627>\
**Category:** News & Articles\
**Tags:** technology, self-improvement\
**Created:** [February 6, 2020, 8:22am UTC](https://onehack.st/t/more-than-a-thousand-scientists-have-built-the-most-detailed-picture-of-cancer-ever/68627 "2020-02-06T08:22:38Z")\
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**Author:** ![TheJoker](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/thejoker/32/22660_2.png) [@TheJoker](https://onehack.st/u/TheJoker)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 8:22am UTC](https://onehack.st/t/more-than-a-thousand-scientists-have-built-the-most-detailed-picture-of-cancer-ever/68627/1 "2020-02-06T08:22:38Z")

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## An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC:

[![](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/17DF2/production/_110787779_gettyimages-1036394342.jpg) ](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/17DF2/production/_110787779_gettyimages-1036394342.jpg)

More than a thousand scientists [have built the most detailed picture of cancer ever in a landmark study](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51391151). They said cancer was like a 100,000-piece jigsaw, and that until today, 99% of the pieces were missing. Their studies, [published in the journal Nature](https://www.nature.com/collections/afdejfafdb/), provide an almost complete picture of all cancers. They could allow treatment to be tailored to each patient’s unique tumor, or develop ways of finding cancer earlier. The Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium analyzed the whole genetic code of 2,658 cancers.

_The project found people’s cancers contain, on average, between four and five fundamental mutations that drive a cancer’s growth. These are potential weak-spots that can be exploited with treatments that attack these “driver mutations.” However, 5% of cancers appear to have no driver mutations at all, showing there is still more work to do. Scientists also developed a way of “carbon dating” mutations. They showed that more than a fifth of them occurred years or even decades before a cancer is found._

> “We’ve developed the first timelines of genetic mutations across the spectrum of cancer types,” said Dr Peter Van Loo from the Francis Crick Institute. He added: “Unlocking these patterns means it should now be possible to develop new diagnostic tests, that pick up signs of cancer much earlier.”

Further reading: [Science Magazine](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/massive-cancer-genome-study-reveals-how-dna-errors-drive-tumor-growth)