UNC is one of twelve centers that are part of an unprecedented large-scale, collaborative effort by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to systematically characterize the genomic changes that occur in cancer. The Cancer Genome Atlas Grant (TCGA) is a five-year award, expected to bring $13-$20M to UNC, placing UNC at the center of a major push to provide a deeper, more systematic understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells and their spread throughout the body.
According to the NHGRI, the genomic information generated by the project could fuel rapid advances in cancer research including new ways to categorize tumors, new therapeutic targets, and methods that allow clinical trials to focus on patients who are most likely to respond to specific treatments. The project aims to develop a comprehensive catalog of the many genetic and genomic changes that occur in cancers including chromosomal changes, gene expression differences, DNA mutations, and epigenomic changes.
"This project represents one of the most ambitious and challenging human genetics efforts to date, only rivaled by its predecessor, the Human Genome Project," said Dr. Charles Perou, associate professor of genetics, and pathology & laboratory medicine. "The TCGA project takes a comprehensive approach to the study of human cancers and applies multiple cutting-edge technologies to the same large set of tumors. The real power of this project is in the integration of these different genetic data types into a common framework that should provide a much more complete picture of why a tumor is a tumor," he added.
UNC's specific focus is to characterize what genes are being expressed, and not expressed, in each tumor type studied. Using a methodology called "gene expression profiling", scientists get a very powerful look at a given tumor and can precisely determine what genes are "on" and what genes are "off". Cancers are typically caused by some genes being inappropriately on, and other genes being inappropriately off, thus being able to look at all genes at once and determine which are on is critical to a better understanding of tumor biology.
The UNC project team is headed by CCGS faculty member Charles Perou and includes a broad multi-disciplinary team that reflects the tremendous complexity and depth of the data collected, and the desire to extract as many biological insights out of this data as possible. Other CCGS collaborators include Jason Lieb, Corbin Jones, Yufeng Liu, Wei Sun and Fred Wright.