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Cancer research needs a better map

It is time to move beyond tumour sequencing data to identify vulnerabilities in cancers.
  1. Jesse S. Boehm

    1. Jesse S. Boehm is a leader of the Cancer Dependency Map project at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

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  2. Mathew J. Garnett

    1. Mathew J. Garnett is a leader of the Cancer Dependency Map project at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK.

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  3. David J. Adams

    1. David J. Adams is a leader of the Cancer Dependency Map project at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK.

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  4. Hayley E. Francies

    1. Hayley E. Francies is a leader of the Cancer Dependency Map project at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK.

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  5. Todd R. Golub

    1. Todd R. Golub is a leader of the Cancer Dependency Map project at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; and a cancer biologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Research Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

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  6. William C. Hahn

    1. William C. Hahn is a leader of the Cancer Dependency Map project at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; and a cancer biologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Research Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

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  7. Francesco Iorio

    1. Francesco Iorio is a leader of the Cancer Dependency Map project at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK; and a computational cancer biologist at the Human Technopole in Milan, Italy.

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  8. James M. McFarland

    1. James M. McFarland is a leader of the Cancer Dependency Map project at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

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  9. Leopold Parts

    1. Leopold Parts is a leader of the Cancer Dependency Map project at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK.

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  10. Francisca Vazquez

    1. Francisca Vazquez is a leader of the Cancer Dependency Map project at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

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A coloured scanning electron micrograph of a spheroid pancreatic cancer cell covered in nodules

There are few models to study rare cancers. Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/SPL

Almost 15 years ago, scientists and clinicians set out to characterize genomes of tumours from thousands of patients. The result? The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC). Nearly every targeted cancer drug approved over the past decade has drawn from the data sets generated by these efforts. This information is now also providing clues to triangulate which individuals can benefit from new types of drug, such as pembrolizumab and nivolumab, which help the immune system to fight cancer. TCGA generated more than 2.5 petabytes of data measuring mutations, gene expression and protein levels across 33 cancer types. It catalysed innovation in DNA sequencing technology and genome analysis. It ultimately collected data from some 11,000 patients — data that thousands of researchers use. This work redefined cancers on the molecular level, and painted a picture of the mutations that occur in common tumour types.

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Nature 589, 514-516 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00182-0

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