Researchers have established that the cells damaged due to cancer are unable to repair themselves and are now in a process of testing the drugs that can identify and kill the damaged cells.

3.6 million ‘Letters’ that constitute a human genetic sequence have already been mapped in the project that got completed in 1999.

Only the damaged cells will be targeted which means that the patients will not have to get chemotherapy done.

British scientists have claimed to be just 10 years away from developing the first pill that cancer that kills cancer by identifying the shortcomings in the DNA.

According to scientists, this 'Achilles heel' can be exploited by the use of gene therapy either in the form of pills or injections to destroy the cancerous DNA cells.

Professor Ghulam Mufti, a leukaemia specialist at Kings College London will be available tonight on BBC2's Horizon program to discuss these new findings.

He said that drugs effective against cancer are being developed by grouping the cancers on the basis of the genetic activity instead of the location of the cancerous cells in the body.

Prof Ashworth added that at certain concentration, the damaged cells are killed while the healthy cells are not affected at all.

Sanger Institute’s researchers in Cambridgeshire are also using super computers to distinguish the difference in DNA’s of cancerous and non-cancerous cells from the same patients.

Professor Eric Alton, of the Cystic Fibrosis Gene Therapy Consortium and Imperial College London is expecting the research to end by 2012.