Big money for cancer genomics

[摘要] The US National Institutes of Health has launched the pilot phase of its controversial Human Cancer Genome Project, which aims to catalog the genetic changes associated with cancer. The project is a potentially huge undertaking that could take 10 years and cost 1.5 billion USA dollars. Its proponents say that tallying up all the genetic mutations in cancer cells may reveal new drug targets. But opponents argue that cancer biology is too poorly understood to make such a cataloging approach viable and say that the money would be better spent on basic research into how cancer functions.