Mission and Goals

The mission of the NCI’s Office of Cancer Genomics (OCG) is to enhance understanding of the molecular mechanisms of cancer, with the ultimate goal of improving the prevention, early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer.

Created in 1996, the OCG interfaces genomics and cancer research through the establishment of information platforms, material resources, and technology infrastructure. The OCG has made numerous contributions to the research enterprise during its first decade; many of the clones produced by OCG programs are publicly available today.

Different cancer types have distinct subgroups and originate from a wide range of genetic mutations and molecular mechanisms; therefore, any effort to understand cancer genomes in a comprehensive, systematic manner must address the technological and procedural hurdles of characterizing the disease.

The OCG helps to overcome technological challenges by: improving molecular characterization methods (e.g., to determine which genes are expressed at different levels in tumors compared to normal cells or how the chromosomes are rearranged) and their throughput; further decreasing the costs of DNA sequencing; improving the detection of epigenetic changes; and developing new analytical methods to correlate disease state with the intricate network of molecular interactions in a cancer.

Daniela Gerhard, Ph.D., serves as the Director of the Office of Cancer Genomics.

The role of the OCG is to:

• Provide information, technology, methods, informatics tools, and reagents to serve the needs of the cancer research community.
• Support, lead, and/or manage six major research programs, listed in order of their inception:
  • The Cancer Genome Anatomy Project (CGAP)
  • The NIH Mammalian Gene Collection (MGC)
  • The Initiative for Chemical Genetics (ICG)
  • The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)
  • Cancer Genetic Markers of Susceptibility (CGEMS)
  • Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments (TARGET)
• Establish and maintain relationships with advisory groups for each of the above programs.

OCG Programs and Impact:

The OCG programs generate and disseminate genomic data and resources for use by the cancer research community. Each OCG program provides systematic approaches to genome-based research, which ultimately impact a wide-range of research projects within the scientific community. OCG programs are interconnected to other genomics and cancer projects whereby extending capabilities and resources to advance the OCG mission to improve cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment.

The chart below provides an overview of all OCG programs and how each program impacts other research projects:

For more information about OCG Programs, click here.

LEGEND

caBIG™: cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid
CGAP: Cancer Genome Anatomy Project
CGEMS: Cancer Genetic Markers of Susceptibility
CPTI: Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative
EST Generation: Sequencing of cDNA clones to create an expressed sequence tag
GWAS: Genome-Wide Association Studies
HapMap: The International Project is to identify and catalog genetic differences in 280 individuals.
ICG: Initiative for Chemical Genetics
MGC: NIH Mammalian Gene Collection
NBN: National Biospecimen Network
OCG: Office of Cancer Genomics
SAGE: Serial Analysis of Gene Expression
SNP500Cancer: Database of verified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)
TARGET: Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments
TCGA: The Cancer Genome Atlas
XGC: NIH Xenopus Gene Collection
ZGC: NIH Zebrafish Gene Collection

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