Translational cancer research comes of age in Latin America

INVESTIGATORS OF THE U.S.LATIN AMERICA CANCER RESEARCH NETWORK*? ; FERNÁNDEZ, ELMER ANDRÉS

Science Translational Medicine

Science

Año: 2015 vol. 7

1946-6234

Ambitious ef orts to characterize the ge-nomics of cancer, made by initiatives such as the Cancer Genome Atlas and the Global Cancer Genomics Consortium, have high-lighted the disease?s complexity and exposed how far we are from understanding the in-trinsic molecular mechanisms that govern cancer outcome and response to therapy (1). Many of these cost-intensive studies used cutting-edge genomic technologies and were performed in developed countries with the support of national and regional agencies. Since then, investigators have delved more deeply into the ef ects of race and ethnic origin, and their intrinsic human genetic variation, on cancer susceptibility, prognosis, and response to therapy. T us, cancer?s complexity has created a challenge that encouraged concerted international ef-forts to improve the capacity for excellence in translational medicine research in devel-oping countries. T is unmet need spurred the Center for Global Health of the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) to create the U.S.?Latin America Cancer Research Network (LACRN) (table S1), with the aim of strengthening collaborative research ef-forts among the participating countries, ad-vancing translational cancer research, and reducing the global cancer burden. Here, we describe the implementation of the net-work?s f rst translational study on breast cancer genomics (Table 1).