Contact:

Daniela S. Gerhard, Ph.D.
Director, Office of Cancer Genomics
National Cancer Institute
National Institutes of Health
Building 31, Room 10A07
31 Center Drive
Bethesda, MD 20892
Telephone: (301) 451-8027
FAX: (301) 480-4368
E-mail: gerhardd@mail.nih.gov

Objective of Project:

This funding opportunity is part of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Pilot Project recently announced by the NCI and NHGRI, with the overall purpose of accelerating our understanding of the genomic alterations associated with the onset and progression of human cancers. Specifically, this funding opportunity is intended to solicit applications for Cancer Genome Characterization Centers (CGCCs), which will be an important component of the TCGA Pilot Project. The pilot project is intended to explore the feasibility and benefits of a systematic effort to rigorously, comprehensively, and reproducibly identify, quantify, and characterize these molecular alterations for specific tumor types and sub-types. The outcomes are expected to provide valuable insights into the understanding and control of cancer. In addition to serving the TCGA Pilot Project, the CGCCs will provide a unique reference resource on cancer-specific genomic aberrations for the cancer research community at large.

To serve the overarching goals of the TCGA Pilot Project, this RFA is designed to establish a collaborative group of multidisciplinary Cancer Genome Characterization Centers (CGCCs) that will use various genomic and/or epigenomic analysis technologies to pioneer the systematic, high-resolution, comprehensive characterization of cancer-related genomic alterations. Several CGCCs will be established to compare, optimize, and standardize high-throughput technologies to survey cancer biospecimens through the analysis of appropriate biomolecules (e.g., DNA and/or RNA) to be provided by the Biospecimen Core Resource of the TCGA Pilot Project. To achieve its primary research objectives, the CGCC program sets a high priority on the optimized and cost efficient implementation of existing technologies, rigorous and standardized quality control assessments, and construction of a unique bioinformatics infrastructure to catalog, evaluate, analyze, and disseminate the data generated. Moreover, it is the goal of the TCGA to make the resulting data publicly available as soon as their quality is verified, usually within a few weeks of generation. In conjunction with extensive clinical annotation for all samples analyzed, data on the cancer-associated molecular alterations identified by the CGCCs will be deposited into public databases and shared with other components of the TCGA Pilot Project Research Network and with the research community at large. The genes and other genomic regions of interest identified by the CGCCs will be analyzed via sequencing by the high-throughput Genome Sequencing Centers participating in the TCGA Pilot Project that are funded separately.

Description of Project:

To serve the overarching goals of the TCGA Pilot Project, this RFA is designed to establish a collaborative group of multidisciplinary Cancer Genome Characterization Centers (CGCCs) that will use various genomic and/or epigenomic analysis technologies to pioneer the systematic, high-resolution, comprehensive characterization of cancer-related genomic alterations. Several CGCCs will be established to compare, optimize, and standardize high-throughput technologies to survey cancer biospecimens through the analysis of appropriate biomolecules (e.g., DNA and/or RNA) to be provided by the Biospecimen Core Resource of the TCGA Pilot Project. To achieve its primary research objectives, the CGCC program sets a high priority on the optimized and cost efficient implementation of existing technologies, rigorous and standardized quality control assessments, and construction of a unique bioinformatics infrastructure to catalog, evaluate, analyze, and disseminate the data generated. Moreover, it is the goal of the TCGA to make the resulting data publicly available as soon as their quality is verified, usually within a few weeks of generation. In conjunction with extensive clinical annotation for all samples analyzed, data on the cancer-associated molecular alterations identified by the CGCCs will be deposited into public databases and shared with other components of the TCGA Pilot Project Research Network and with the research community at large. The genes and other genomic regions of interest identified by the CGCCs will be analyzed via sequencing by the high-throughput Genome Sequencing Centers participating in the TCGA Pilot Project that are funded separately.