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PM hopes to make Britain 'world leader in genetics'

Prime Minister David Cameron hopes Britain will become a world leader in genetic research after unveiling a "landmark" £300 million project which will map 100,000 complete DNA code sequences.

The study, which will be completed in 2017, aims to lead the way in research on cancer and rare diseases and could be pivotal to the development of future personalised treatments, which has the potential to revolutionise medicine.

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Research set to make chemotherapy 'thing of the past'

The £300 million genome research announced by the Prime Minister will make chemotherapy "a thing of the past", according to one medical expert.

Professor Jeremy Farrar, director of health charity the Wellcome Trust, believes genome sequencing has the potential to transform medicine.

It's actually happening now, in small ways. If you go into a hospital with lung cancer, for instance, that cancer will be sequenced.

Twenty years from now academics and industry will have developed therapies which will be targeted at you and specific forms of cancer.

We will look back in 20 years time and the blockbuster chemotherapy drugs that gave you all those nasty side effects will be a thing of the past.

– Professor Jeremy Farrar

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