The devastating changes that turn healthy tissue into cancer are to be investigated in the biggest centre of its kind in the NHS.
The laboratories at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) will use information in tumour DNA to help find the best "personalised" treatments.
Its director said this was not science fiction and would be day-to-day practice in the NHS within a decade.
Rapid advances in being able to sequence the genetic code of patients are allowing breakthroughs in understanding which mutations transform a healthy cell into a cancerous one.
Identifying the mutations can then be used to choose the best treatment. The most famous example of this is the drug Herceptin, which is used in breast cancers with a certain genetic abnormality.
The new centre will test samples from patients at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.
The ICR's director, Prof Alan Ashworth, said: "None of this is science fiction. This is now happening. We think we're pioneering the clinical application of this by setting up the Tumour Profiling Unit, but one would think this would be absolutely routine practice for every cancer patient - and that's what we're aiming to bring about."
Other challenges for the field include storing the data. The genetic codes of one million cancer patients would take up the same amount of space as YouTube.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21235103
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