Newspapers are reporting that scientists have finally been able to ‘cracked the code’ for cancer, by analyzing the entire genetic sequence of malignant melanoma skin cancer, including an aggressive form of lung cancer.

In the past, since sequencing the entire DNA of a cell would have been far too time-consuming, researchers only studied smaller sections of DNA, however, recent technological advances have now made it possible to quickly analyse the entire DNA sequence within a cell.

However, cancer being a complex disease, all cancer patients will not have the exact same mutations as found in this research. Nor, will all the identified mutations contribute to the cancerous nature of the cells, which is why, future research is needed to look at DNA of other individuals for pin-pointing the mutations likely to cause these cancers.

This means, eventually every patient will have to have their entire cancer genome sequenced on a routine basis.

The deciphering of the first complete cancer genomes or genetic maps by UK scientists means, the way has been paved for treatments tailored to individual patients.

This research has been published as two papers in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature.