The Human Cancer Genome Project - HCGP - has been the most important contribution of Brazilian science to the understanding of the Human Genome. This project was co-sponsored by FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation) and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. Twenty-nine sequencing laboratories integrated by a bioinformatic service and a laboratory carried out the project. This effort has generated more than 1 million of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) in various human cancers. Most of these sequences are available to public accessing at NCBI Gene Bank (<A HREF="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/">www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov</A> by ORESTES keyword). Currently there are several ongoing projects that utilize the information and genomic library generated by HCGP. These studies are focused in the characterization of a complete physical map of genes, differential gene expression in tumors and also in the structural and functional understanding of the expressed gene. In the future, the generated knowledge would contribute to new insights into the prevention, diagnosis and therapeutic procedures in cancer and other diseases.
Human genome; ESTs; ORESTES; GenBank; Transcriptome; Genome