March 07, 2018
Dr. Francis Collins highlights the first trans-TARGET data publication in his Director’s blog Working Towards Greater Precision in Childhood Cancers. This study, published in Nature, analyzed DNA sequence data (primarily whole genome) representing tumor and normal tissue from 1,699 patients with childhood cancers, and uncovered 142 driver genes that are somatically altered in pediatric tumors studied. Interestingly, only 45 percent of these driver genes had been identified in previous “pan-cancer” studies of adult malignancies. To read the referenced Nature article click here.