With one out of every two men and one out of every three women
in the United States likely to get cancer at some point in their
lives-and about 560,000 Americans expected to die of the disease
this year alone, according to the American Cancer Society-
advances can’t come fast enough. As many as 500 research
laboratories in academia and industry are already employing DNA
chips to develop sweeping new genetic pictures of different
cancers. In 1999, the National Cancer Institute alone provided
$4.1 million to 24 U.S. academic cancer institutions to set up
or upgrade microarray centers.Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical and
biotech industries are drawing on information gleaned from DNA
chips to develop new and better diagnostic tests and more
effective anticancer drugs with fewer side effects. Indeed, all
the major drug companies and at least a dozen biotech firms are
already using DNA chips to tackle cancer. At the same time,
large manufacturing companies such as Agilent Technologies,
Corning and Motorola are seeing