Through an extensive research conducted by scientists from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and other research centers in the UK and the US, researchers have managed to "crack the code" of two deadliest forms of cancer, thereby making it possible for treatments to be tailored individually for patients with aggressive forms of lungs cancer or melanoma, a skin cancer.

Earlier, scientists were only able to look at and study "smaller sections of DNA, as sequencing the entire DNA of a cell would have taken a very long time", but thanks to advanced methods available nowadays, the analysis of the "entire sequence of DNA within a cell" happened much quickly.

Despite the groundbreaking discovery, scientists have been quick to warn that cancer is a very complex disease of cells, and not all patients would have the same kind of mutations that were found in the research. Similarly, not all the mutations that have been found would necessarily contribute to the cells' cancerous nature. Much extensive future studies are, therefore, needed before any conclusive theories can be formed.

The study discussed above is a part of a much larger study that is currently going on, The International Cancer Genome Consortium, and is attempting to genetically analyze 50 different tumor types.