Let's imagine it takes five genes to go bad to give you a cancer cell. That may be enough to turn off the cancer. Every month, it seems, there's another headline about scientists discovering a gene linked to cancer. This month, it's the gene that makes skin cancer spread to other parts of the body, where it turns deadly.
Researchers are, in fact, making unprecedented progress at getting to the molecular roots of cancer.
And they are tantalizingly close to gene-based strategies for diagnosing, preventing and treating the dreaded condition. But cancer is actually hundreds of genetic diseases, not just one, and there almost surely isn't one magic-bullet cure that will emerge from the research. Experts agree that it will be several years before most cancer patients start to see the payoffs from this whirlwind of discoveries. We're not there yet. So far, after two decades of intense research, scientists have identified more than 100 cancer genes, according to the National Cancer Institute.