Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

the accelerator and brakes of a car. The oncogene acts like an accelerator stuck in the down position, so the car careens out of control, allowing the cell to reproduce without limit. The tumor suppressor normally acts like a brake, so when it is damaged, the cell is like a car that can’t stop.
    The Cancer Genome Project plans to sequence the genes of most cancers. Since each cancer requires sequencing the human genome, the Cancer Genome Project is hundreds of times more ambitious than the original Human Genome Project.
    Some of the first results of this long-awaited Cancer Genome Project were announced in 2009 concerning skin and lung cancer. The results were startling. Mike Stratton of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute said, “ What we are seeing today is going to transform the way that we see cancer. We have never seen cancer revealed in this form before.”
    Cells from a lung cancer cell had an astounding 23,000 individual mutations, while the melanoma cancer cell had 33,000 mutations. This means that a typical smoker develops one mutation for every fifteen cigarettes he or she smokes. (Lung cancer kills 1 million people every year around the world, mostly from smoking.)
    The goal is to genetically analyze all types of cancers, of which there are more than 100. There are many tissues in the body, all of which can become cancerous; many types of cancers for each tissue; and tens of thousands of mutations within each type of cancer. Since each cancer involves tens of thousands of mutations, it will take many decades to isolate precisely which of these mutations causes the cell mechanism to go haywire. Scientists willdevelop cures for a wide variety of cancers but no one cure for all of them, since cancer itself is like a collection of diseases.
    New treatments and therapies will also continually enter the market, all of them designed to hit cancer at its molecular and genetic roots. Some of the promising ones include:
     
    • antiangiogenesis, or choking off the blood supply of a tumor so that it never grows
    • nanoparticles, which are like “smart bombs” directed at cancer cells
    • gene therapy, especially for gene p53
    • new drugs that target just the cancer cells
    • new vaccinations against viruses that can cause cancer, like the human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause cervical cancer
    Unfortunately, it is unlikely that we will find a magic bullet for cancer. Rather, we will cure cancer one step at a time. More than likely, the major reduction in death rates will come when we have DNA chips scattered throughout our environment, constantly monitoring us for cancer cells years before a tumor forms.
    As Nobel laureate David Baltimore notes, “ Cancer is an army of cells that fights our therapies in ways that I’m sure will keep us continually in the battle.”

MIDCENTURY (2030 TO 2070)
    GENE THERAPY
    Despite the setbacks in gene therapy, researchers believe steady gains will be made into the coming decades. By midcentury, many think, gene therapy will be a standard method of treating a variety of genetic diseases. Much of the success that scientists have had in animal studies will eventually be translated into human studies.
    So far, gene therapy has targeted diseases caused by mutations in a single gene. They will be the first to be cured. But many diseases are caused by mutations in multiple genes, along with triggers from the environment. These are much more difficult to treat, but they include such importantdiseases as diabetes, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and heart disease. All of them show definite genetic patterns, but no single gene is responsible. For example, it is possible to have a schizophrenic whose identical twin is normal.
    Over the years, there have been a number of announcements that scientists have been able to isolate some of the genes involved in schizophrenia by following the genetic history of certain families. However, it is embarrassing that these results are often not verifiable by other independent studies. So these results are flawed, or perhaps many genes are involved in schizophrenia. Plus, certain environmental factors seem to be involved.
    By midcentury, gene therapy should become a well-established therapy, at least for diseases caused by single genes. But patients might not be content with just fixing genes. They may also want to improve them.
    DESIGNER CHILDREN
    By midcentury, scientists will go beyond just fixing broken genes to actually