Reflections on the Founding of the International Cancer Genome Consortium

Abstract

Five years have passed since the strategy meeting that launched the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC)4 in October 2007. The intervening 5 years have been a time of remarkable progress in cancer genome research, with great strides having been made toward understanding the mutational landscape of cancer and the early adoption of genome analyses in the clinical management of patients. Although progress in the field of cancer genomics has received wide coverage in the scientific literature and lay media, not much has been written about the events that led to the founding of the international consortium. Given our involvement in these events, we were asked to look back at the circumstances that attracted many of the world's leading cancer agencies, genome and cancer scientists, ethicists, computer scientists, and other experts to work together. The common purposes were to accelerate the discovery of many new cancer biomarkers and potential cancer targets and to spur the development of new clinical tests and therapeutic interventions that would benefit cancer patients worldwide. Fig. 1 is a slide from the opening talk at the International Cancer Genomics Strategy Meeting held in Toronto, Canada, on October 1 and 2, 2007. This meeting was convened by 6 organizations—the European Commission, Genome Canada, the National Cancer Institute, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, and the Wellcome Trust. The meeting drew 122 participants from 22 countries, including world leaders in cancer genomics research, ethics, statistics, informatics, and pathology, as well as directors of funding agencies. International researchers and funding agencies used the forum to exchange knowledge and discuss the range of opportunities for a consortium initiative that would generate an atlas of genomic abnormalities in cancer. Fig. 1. Challenges and opportunities supporting the formation of the International Cancer Genome Consortium. TCGA, The Cancer Genome Atlas; WTSI CGP, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute–Cancer Genome Project; TSP, Tumor Sequencing …