End of cancer-genome project prompts rethink

Heidi Ledford in Nature:

A mammoth US effort to genetically profile 10,000 tumours has officially come to an end. Started in 2006 as a US$100-million pilot, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) is now the biggest component of the International Cancer Genome Consortium, a collaboration of scientists from 16 nations that has discovered nearly 10 million cancer-related mutations.

The question is what to do next. Some researchers want to continue the focus on sequencing; others would rather expand their work to explore how the mutations that have been identified influence the development and progression of cancer. “TCGA should be completed and declared a victory,” says Bruce Stillman, president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. “There will always be new mutations found that are associated with a particular cancer. The question is: what is the cost–benefit ratio?” Stillman was an early advocate for the project, even as some researchers feared that it would drain funds away from individual grants. Initially a three-year project, it was extended for five more years. In 2009, it received an additional $100 million from the US National Institutes of Health plus $175 million from stimulus funding that was intended to spur the US economy during the global economic recession.

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