Global consortium to hunt for cancer genes

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists from around the world are joining forces to hunt for key genetic mutations involved in cancer.

The International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), launched on Tuesday, will look at up to 50 different types of cancer and researchers hope it will eventually lead to better diagnosis, treatment and prevention.

The new group builds on the success of Britain's Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, which has already found far more mutations to be involved in cancer than originally thought.

The Wellcome Trust said the international alliance would use high-speed technology to scan the DNA of tumor cells in order to pinpoint genetic coding errors linked to different cancers.

"In the past we have had piecemeal or low magnification views of the cancer genome," Mike Stratton, co-head of the British project, said in a statement.

"With the advent of new faster DNA sequencing technologies the ICGC now has set the hugely ambitious aim of fully sequencing thousands of cancer genomes to catalogue all the changes in DNA and obtain a complete picture of the abnormalities that lead to cancer."

Other members of the consortium include the U.S. National Institutes of Health, as well as cancer and genetic research groups from Australia, Canada, China, France, India, Japan and Singapore.

The creation of the ICGC was welcomed by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

"International cooperation in health research is essential to maximize the opportunities that we have to find the cures and treatments for some of the most serious diseases which we face," he said.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; editing by Keith Weir)