British and Brazilian scientists tracing the genes in a human cancer say they will have a full genetic map of a tumor by the end of next year.

``By the end of 2001, we expect to have a complete idea of the genes in breast cancer,'' said England's Andrew Simpson, a molecular biologist and director of the Human Cancer Genome Project at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Sao Paulo.

The group is focusing on the specific gene sequences related to the development of tumors rather than genes linked to a predisposition or vulnerability to breast cancer, Simpson said.

A complete map of cancer genes could lead to the development of more efficient diagnostic tools and a new generation of drugs tailored to combat the disease, he said this week.

Simpson heads the Brazilian project, which involves 30 laboratories in the state of Sao Paulo and more than 100 Brazilian scientists. The group already has identified 400,000 gene sequences involved in the formation of tumors, 20 percent of which were previously unknown, he said.

The Brazilian group has authored a significant number of entries in GenBank, an international public database of human gene sequences based at the National Institutes of Health, said Lawrence Brody, a geneticist at the National Human Genome Research Institute in Maryland.

Still, Brody said it would be difficult to find all the genes active in breast cancer formation within two years.

``I think it will take longer than that,'' he said.

The dlrs 20 million project, jointly funded by the state of Sao Paulo and the private Ludwig Institute, chose to focus on breast cancer because it is the most common form of fatal cancer in Brazil, Simpson said. He said they would also seek to identify genes of other types of cancers common in developing countries.

``Our intention is to insure that Brazil will be in the best position to take advantage of the information from the Human Genome Project for the benefit of public health,'' Simpson said.

Brazil is not new to the cutting edge of genetic science. Early this year, Simpson and many of the laboratories working on the cancer project completed the genetic sequencing of a bacterium that attacks orange trees. That discovery was claimed to be the first complete genetic map of a plant bacterium.

　　(From China Daily)