A brief history of cancer

Professor David Thomas, Garvan Institute of Medical Research

Cancer is an ancient disease

The first age of cancer: anatomy (B.C.E.-1838)

The second age of cancer: the cell (1838-2001)

Omnis cellula e cellula

The third age of cancer: genes and molecules (1953-)

Watson, Crick, Wilkins, Franklin. Molecular structure of nucleic acids. Nature, April 25, 1953. Vol. 4356: 737.

Cancer is a genetic disease

Genomically identified risk= 10-25% of cancers

= 15,000-35,000 Australians in 2020

The game is changing

Whole Genome Sequencing: democratizing genetics

• For the first time: – Whole genomes at the population level

• Comprehensive baseline map of human genetic variation

• Illumina X-Ten:– Only site in southern hemisphere

National Computational Infrastructure• Petascale supercomputer + highest performance research cloud + highest performance storage in the southern

hemisphere• Serves national science agencies (BoM, CSIRO), 30 universities and industry

– 2,500 research users; 1,400 journal articles supported by NCI services

Facts and Figures• Supercomputer: 1.2 petaflops (1,200,000,000,000,000 operations/sec)• Global integrated storage

– 20 petabytes of disk at up to 120 Gbytes/sec bandwidth– 40 petabytes of tape for archive purposes

• Power consumption: 1.6-2.0 megawatts • HPC and data infrastructure: $72M; recurrent operations: $17M p.a.

100

908070

605040

3020100P

rog

ress

ion

-fre

e s

urv

iva

l (%

)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Months

Dacarbazine

(N=274)

Vemurafenib (N=275)

Median 1.6

mos

Median 5.3

mos

Molecular medicines

Ductal

Melanoma

SCC

RAF

Her2

BRCAER/PR

GISTKIT

Histopathology Molecular pathology

Breast

Bowel

Skin

Bone

Lobular

Ewing

Osteo

Anatomy

Rare & neglected cancers

Cancer is curable if detected early

Cancer and families

Cancer is a genetic disease

Why knowing matters

Tabar et al., Lancet, 2003

Age-Standardised Ten-Year Net Survival, Selected Cancers, Adults (Aged 15-99), England and Wales, 2010-2011

Please include the citation provided in our Frequently Asked Questions when reproducing this chart: http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/faqs/#HowPrepared by Cancer Research UKOriginal data sources:Cancer Research UK Cancer Survival Group, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Personal communication, 2014.

Ten-year survival for 2005-2006 and 2010-2011 is predicted using an excess hazard statistical model

Survival for bowel cancer is a weighted average derived from data for colon (C18) and rectum cancer (C19-C20, C21.8)

Breast is for female only. Laryngeal is for male only

Science, cancer and survival