Global genetics consortium launches major cancer research initiative

29 April 2008

Researchers from four continents have come together to launch the `International Cancer Genome Consortium' (ICGC), a major collaboration designed to identify the key genetic mutations involved in up to 50 types of cancer.

The consortium will group researchers from the  US National Institutes of Health, as well as cancer and genetic research groups from Australia, Canada, China, France, India, Japan and Singapore.

The consortium, which includes the Wellcome Trust and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK, will generate a valuable resource enabling the development of new and better ways of diagnosing, treating and preventing cancer, a release on the Welcom Trust website said.

The ICGC hopes to build on the success of the UK's Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. The team will use the DNA sequencing of thousands of cancer genomes to catalogue all the changes and obtain a complete picture of the abnormalities that lead to cancer.

A research team of the Cancer Genome Project led by Mike Stratton at the Sanger Institute had found far more mutations to be involved in cancer than originally thought. The research team also established that the BRAF gene is commonly mutated in malignant melanoma and some other tumours.

The international alliance would use high-speed technology to scan the DNA of tumor cells in order to pinpoint genetic coding errors linked to different cancers.