The Pediatric Cancer Genome Project
James R Downing1,2,
Richard K Wilson3,4,
Jinghui Zhang1,5,
Elaine R Tuesdays3,4,
Ching-Hon Pui1,2,6, Li Ding3,4, Timothy J Ley3,4, and William E Evans1,7
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital-Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project (PCGP) is participating in an international effort to identify somatic mutations that cause cancer.
These cancer genome sequencing efforts will not only generate an unparalleled view of the altered signaling pathways in cancer, but also identify new targets and new treatments that can be developed.
Although these projects are still at the stage of generating primary DNA sequence data, important results are emerging, and valuable community resources are being produced that will promote future cancer research.
Here we describe the basic principles of PCGP, introduce some of the early results of the project, and discuss the main lessons learned and how these lessons will affect the clinical application of genome sequencing.