Cancer Genome Atlas project launched

Biology, one of the best-funded branches of science these days, marches rapidly ahead....

According to the Washington Post,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301667.html

"
Federal health officials yesterday launched the biggest genetic research endeavor since the landmark human genome project: an ambitious effort to categorize all of the hundreds of molecular glitches that turn normal healthy cells into cancers.The Cancer Genome Atlas, whose total cost could reach $1 billion or more, will for the first time direct the full force of today's sophisticated genetic technologies to the thorough understanding of a single disease -- one that will eventually strike nearly half of all Americans alive.
"

Semi-relatedly, I had a meeting at the National Cancer Institute recently where I discussed with some researchers the need to use advanced pattern-recognition technology to find combinations of genes and proteins that contribute to cancer (rather than just studying the effects of individual genes in isolation, which is the default paradigm now). They understood the need, but I got the impression that their progress toward actually adopting a "radical" approach like this will be fairly slow.

However, if the NCI is going to put big bucks into trying to obtain a "complete" understanding of cancer, then they are going to run up against this problem pretty quickly.

At some point in the not too distant future of biology, genomics is going to meet systems biology -- i.e., enabled by sophisticated informatics, it will supply sufficient data to make simulation models of the interactions inside cells and organisms. At this point we will see really fast progress toward a fuller understanding of biological systems. Perhaps the study of cancer (since it's so popular with funding sources) will be the domain in which this transition occurs....

At dinner with a group of biologists in Melbourne earlier this year, I asked how long they thought it would be till human biology was basically finished (in the sense that we pretty much fully understand the human organism in its original unaugmented condition). No one wanted to venture a guess, but when I speculated "50 years", a couple folks were brave enough to agree with me... (I didn't get into the Singularity; it wasn't that kind of crowd ;-)

-- Ben Goertzel