Introduction and Project Goals

According to the NIH, 611,720 people will die of cancer in the United States, with cancer prevalence continuing to rise each year [1]. As a result, large amounts of funding go towards researching the mechanisms of different types of cancer, as well as for determining new treatments, with this value estimated to reach 307 billion USD by 2026 [2]. Despite this funding, less prevalent cancers are marked as less profitable, and therefore fewer treatments are pursued for these equally harmful types of cancers.

The goal of this project is to provide a comprehensive review on the prevalence of cancer-causing genes on the human genome in comparison to current targeted therapies. Or simply, what is the relationship between mutations and cancer, and are current cancer drugs targeting the most common cancer-causing genes?

To achieve this, the patterns of cancer-associated mutations must first be investigated by examining if there are specific chromosomes that are responsible for more cancer-associated mutations, and if certain locations on a chromosome are more likely to host cancer causing mutations. In addition, the distribution of types of mutations across somatic and germline DNA will be observed. Following this, the count of mutations for each cancer-associated gene will be calculated and compared to the count of responsive therapies to the corresponding gene. Lastly, the distribution of responses of cancer treatments will be evaluated to determine if specific drug families are more susceptible to adverse reactions.

References