The National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), both parts of the National Institutes of Health, reported another two of the components of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Pilot Project, a three-year, $100 million collaboration to test the feasibility of using large-scale genome analysis technologies to identify important genetic changes involved in cancer. Lung, brain (glioblastoma), and ovarian cancers have been chosen as the tumors for study by TCGA Pilot Project.

Awards have been made to seven institutions in five states to establish Cancer Genome Characterization Centers (CGCCs). CGCCs will work as a network, with each center using advanced genome analysis technologies to identify major changes in the genomes of the cancers chosen for TCGA pilot program. NCI awarded a total of $11.7 million per year to support the CGCCs. The institutions receiving CGCC awards are:

• Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard (both Cambridge, Mas-sachusetts). Using the Affymetrix (Santa Clara, California) platform, this center will identify changes in expression and copy number alterations that occur in cancer.

• Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston). Using the Agilent Technologies (Santa Clara, California) platform, this center will characterize tumor samples for alterations in chromosome segments copy number. This center will also develop new technologies to analyze expression profiles.

• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, California). Using an Affymetrix Exon 1.0 array platform, this center will identify changes in the transcription profiles that occur in cancer.

• Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York). Using Agilent arrays, this center will provide characterization of chromosome segment gains and losses. This center also will develop new approaches to detect novel genetic rearrangements.

• The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore). This is a joint project with the University of Southern California/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center to detect changes in methylation profiles associated with transcribed genes in cancer samples.

• Stanford University School of Medicine (Palo Alto, California). This center will use high-throughput whole-genome genotyping technology to identify chromosome segments copy number variation found in cancer.

• University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center (Chapel Hill, North Carolina). Using an Agilent array platform, the center will identify changes in the transcription profiles that occur in cancer.

Additionally, SRA International (Fairfax, Virginia) has been selected to develop the Data Coordinating Center for the TCGA Pilot Project. The DCC will track data produced by components of TCGA and make TCGA data publicly accessible through databases supported by NCI's Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid and the National Library of Medicine's National Center for Biotechnology Information (Washington).

TCGA was launched in December 2005.

John Niederhuber, MD, new head of NCI, said, "TCGA holds the potential to help turn what we know into what we can harness — to be able to study changes in a patient's genetic sequence over time and then use that information to design highly targeted, individually based interventions."

"The Cancer Genome Atlas Pilot Project will generate large quantities of data that will require an immense amount of expertise and coordination," said Francis Collins, MD, PhD, director of NHGRI. "The Data Coordinating Center is an essential component of The Cancer Genome Atlas Pilot Project and will help researchers take advantage of the molecular information describing the genomic changes in the cancers studied."