Our understanding of human cancer in the past 40 years has been driven by linking innovative concepts and cutting edge technologies to key problems identified by clinical research. Some of the successes in cancer genetics identified from clinical work have been the identification of specific gene deletions in human chromosomes, the use of PCR-based cloning methodologies to identify and clone human cancer genes, the validation of the human cancer genes using transgenetic technologies in the mouse, and the ability to sequence whole genomes that has recently allowed a collation of all somatic...