Read the essay: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/david-patterson-enlist-computer-scientists-in-ca...
Computer Scientists May Have What It Takes to Help Cure Cancer
By DAVID PATTERSON
The war against cancer is increasingly moving into cyberspace. Computer scientists may have the best skills to fight cancer in the next decade — and they should be signing up in droves.
One reason to enlist: Cancer is so pervasive. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “The Emperor of All Maladies,” the oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee writes that cancer is a disease of frightening fractions: One-fourth of deaths in the United States are caused by cancer; one-third of women will face cancer in their lifetimes; and so will half of men.
As he wrote, “The question is not if we will get this immortal disease, but when.”
Dr. Mukherjee noted that surprisingly recently, researchers discovered that cancer is a genetic disease, caused primarily by mutations in our DNA. As well as providing the molecular drivers of cancer, changes to the DNA also cause the diversity within a cancer tumor that makes it so hard to eradicate completely.
The hope is that by sequencing the genome of a cancer tumor, doctors will soon be able to prescribe a personalized, targeted therapy to stop a cancer’s growth or to cure it.
According to Walter Isaacson’s new biography “Steve Jobs,” a team of medical researchers sequenced the Apple executive’s pancreatic cancer tumor and used that information to decide which drug therapies to use. Since Mr. Jobs’s cancer had already spread, this effort was even more challenging. Each sequencing cost $100,000.
