Glancing toward the ceiling, speaking in a soft voice, Melissa Restaino tells the story of losing her mother to cancer a year ago. She misses her laugh.

In Restaino’s mind no one should suffer the way her mother did.

“Watching someone go through that … I can’t even describe that pain,” Restaino, a senior at the University said. “It’s almost as emotionally painful to watch, and I think if they could come up with something to fix it — well — that would be great.”

A cure may not be the direct goal of a newly-proposed cancer research project, but people who support it hope it may be a result.

Project developers have dubbed it the Human Cancer Genome Project. The project’s goal is to determine the DNA sequence of thousands of tumor samples. Currently there are 50 major types of cancer.

Once completed, the information could be used as a database to look at the mutations that lead to the different kinds of cancer.

The American Cancer Society estimates 1,372,910 Americans will be diagnosed with cancer this year. For Restaino’s family, this possibility became a reality, four years ago.

In the end of her senior year in high school, Restaino remembers the day she came home and her mother Jeanne told her she had breast cancer. With help from chemotherapy Jeanne fought off the tumor.

She also remembers the phone call from her father, explaining that her mother had formed a staph infection from reconstructive surgery a year later.

Then, during her sophomore year, she remembers trying to convince her father to let her withdraw from school. The doctors had found another tumor, this time in her mother’s brain. Jeanne beat that one too.

But on March 19, 2004, she was diagnosed with a second brain tumor. This one proved to be too much.

“Honestly, a person’s worst fear is finding out something has happened to someone that you love,” Restaino said. “I think every time I got one of those calls it is like … is it ever going to end? Each time you give up a little bit of hope.”

Scientists have been researching and analyzing the effects of cancer for years, hoping to find a way to stop it in its path. But cancer is complicated.

All cancers occur because of abnormalities in DNA sequence, according to the Sanger Institute, a genome research institute in England.

These abnormalities can cause mistakes in cell reproduction beginning with cells that are exposed carcinogens or mutagens — found in tobacco, chemicals, radiation and infectious organisms.

But cancer can also be caused by internal factors like inherited mutations, hormones, immune conditions and mutations that occur from someone’s diet or metabolism, according to the ACS.

The mistakes manage to change the DNA sequence of a cell just a little bit and occasionally this can affect a critical gene.

Affected cells can then grow and clone themselves — eventually expanding to invade surrounding tissues and sometimes transmitting the cancer cells to one or more places in the body.

It is hard to cure because cancer is not a single disease. Every type of cancer is different.

This means there is not one cure out there, said Dr. Gerald Marsa, a radiologist at St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center in Toledo.

“Cancer cells don’t start and stop growing at the body’s instructions like normal cells do,” Marsa explained.

When we are babies, genes in the body give signals to the cells to grow. Then, once we reach adulthood, genes tell the body to stop growing. These are often called suppressor genes, Marsa said.

“One of the hopes is we will be able to identify the growth of the chromosome and put a suppressor gene in that will correct the abnormalities,” Marsa said.

Proponents of the Human Cancer Genome Project believe the database created could offer such clues, which would help scientists develop ways to diagnose, treat and prevent cancer.

There is, however, one serious hold up. The study would cost roughly $1.35 billion over nine years and resources of funding are still uncertain.

According to a March 28, 2005 article in The New York Times, the proposal was presented in February to an advisory committee of the National Cancer Institute.

The article reported that leaders of two agencies within the National Institutes of Health said they would likely help finance the project.

A key reason to start the project now is that the cost of sequencing has dropped, officials said. Sequencing is the process of determining the exact order of the 3 billion chemical building blocks that make up the DNA of the 24 different human chromosomes.

According to the report by ACS about 570,280 people are estimated to die from cancer in 2005. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by heart disease.

It may be too late for her mother, but any kind of discovery that may curb the pain cancer patients face would be wonderful, Restaino said.

“I remember being frustrated with what it was doing to her,” Restaino said. “[The treatment] was supposed to be making her better, it was supposed to prolong her life — and I know it did. But sometimes I couldn’t be sure if it was making her better or making her more miserable.”

Those who deal with cancer patients, like Dr. Marsa, hope the way to cure all cancers will one day will be a reality.

For now though, daughters like Restaino will miss the laugh of someone they loved, cherishing the memories they each have.

“She was a full-time mother when I was little,” Restaino said. “She was the most caring, loving mother that anyone could ask for, and me and my brother were just so blessed.”