369therapies; scientifi c interest; and the ability to obtain enough high-quality samples
to conduct a large-scale project.
To facilitate comparisons among different types of cancer, the ICGC guidelines
list key factors for its members to consider in the production of genomic catalogs.
Those factors include comprehensiveness, which involves detecting all cancer-
related genetic mutations that occur in at least 3 % of tumor samples; resolution,
which involves generating data at the level of individual DNA bases; quality, which
involves monitoring based on common standards for pathology and technology; and
controls, which involves comparisons of data from matched, noncancerous tissue.
ICGC member nations will agree to common standards for informed consent and
ethical oversight. Although the informed consent process will necessarily differ
according to each member country’s requirements, the consortium’s policies state
that cancer patients enrolled in an ICGC-related study should be informed that their
participation is voluntary, that their clinical care will not be affected by their partici-
pation and that data obtained from analyses using their samples will be made avail-
able to the international research community. ICGC members also should take steps
to ensure that all samples will be coded and stored in ways that protect the identities
of the participants. To maximize the public benefi t from ICGC member research,
data will be made rapidly available to qualifi ed investigators. All consortium par-
ticipants agree not to fi le any patent applications or make intellectual property
claims on primary data from ICGC projects.
Currently (as of the end of 2014), the ICGC has received commitments from
funding organizations in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America
for 74 project teams in 17 jurisdictions to study >25,000 tumor genomes. Projects
that are currently funded are examining tumors affecting: the biliary tract, bladder,
blood, bone, brain, breast, cervix, colon, eye, head and neck, kidney, liver, lung,
nasopharynx, oral cavity, ovary, pancreas, prostate, rectum, skin, soft tissues, stom-
ach, thyroid and uterus. The genomic analyses of tumors conducted by ICGC mem-
bers in Australia (ovarian and pancreatic cancer), Canada (pancreatic, pediatric
brain and prostate cancer), China (bladder, esophageal, gastric and renal cancer),
European Union/France (renal cancer), France (liver cancer), Germany (blood,
brain and prostate cancer), India (oral cancer), Japan (liver cancer), Saudi Arabia
(thyroid cancer), South Korea (blood and lung cancer), Spain (blood cancer), the
UK (blood, bone, breast, esophageal, lung, prostate and skin cancer) and the USA
(bladder, blood, brain, breast, cervical, colon, gastric, head and neck, liver, lung,
ovarian, pancreatic, prostate, rectal, renal, skin, thyroid and uterine cancer) are now
available through the Data Coordination Center housed on the ICGC website.
National Cancer Institute of US
The NCI plans to fund projects for 2015 that cover the following areas:
- Compare recurrent and non-recurrent screen-detected lesions and interval can-
cers at the molecular level.
Future of Cancer Therapy