The consensus coding sequences of human breast and colorectal cancers

The elucidation of the human genome sequence has made it possible to identify genetic alterations in cancers in unprecedented detail. To begin a systematic analysis of such alterations, we determined the sequence of well-annotated human protein-coding genes in two common tumor types. Analysis of 13,023 genes in 11 breast and 11 colorectal cancers revealed that individual tumors accumulate an average of approximately 90 mutant genes but that only a subset of these contribute to the neoplastic process.