Cohort Consortium
The Cohort Consortium is an extramural-intramural* partnership formed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to address the need for large-scale collaborations in order to have sufficient data and biospecimens to study gene-gene and gene-environment interactions in the etiology of cancer. The Cohort Consortium provides a coordinated, interdisciplinary approach to tackling important scientific questions, economies of scale, opportunities to quicken the pace of research, and a collaborative network of investigators. View the Cohort Consortium's mission statement.
The Cohort Consortium includes investigators responsible for 39 high-quality cohorts involving over 4 million people. The cohorts are international in scope and cover large and diverse populations. Extensive risk factor data are available on each cohort, and biospecimens including germline DNA collected at baseline are available for over 2 million individuals. Investigators team up to use common protocols and methods and to conduct coordinated parallel and pooled analyses.
Dozens of initiatives have been launched by Cohort Consortium members, including the following four signature initiatives:
- The Body Mass Index (BMI) and All Cause Mortality Pooling Project is a collaborative effort between 19 prospective studies, encompassing 1.46 million adults, to examine and quantify the relationship between BMI and all-cause mortality within the NCI-sponsored Cohort Consortium.
- The Breast and Prostate Cancer Cohort Consortium (BPC3) is conducting collaborating studies of hormone-related gene variants and environmental factors involved in the development of breast and prostate cancer. This research involves 10 cohorts and pooled data on 8,850 patients with prostate cancer and 6,160 patients with breast cancer. The goal is to characterize common variations in about 50 candidate genes that mediate the steroid hormone metabolism and insulin-like growth factor signaling pathways, and associate these variations with cancer risk. The investigators described their approach in Nature Reviews Cancer (Dec.2005). The BPC3 is the Cohort Consortium's first initiative and began in 2003. It is funded through grants from NCI's Epidemiology and Genetics Research Program (EGRP) for participation of the extramural (non-NCI) cohorts and by NCI's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG), which is the intramural (in-house) epidemiology research component of the Institute and manages two of the participating cohorts.
- The Pancreatic Cancer Cohort Consortium (PanScan) is conducting whole genome scans of common genetic variants in 1,200 pancreatic cancer cases and 1,200 controls from 12 cohorts to identify markers of susceptibility to pancreatic cancer. The promising genetic variants (single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified then will be validated by testing data from participants in a pancreatic cancer case-control consortium. The Whole Genome Scan for Pancreatic Cancer Risk (PanScan) Study began in September 2006. Funding is provided through grant support from EGRP for the extramural cohorts and by DCEG for its two participating cohorts.
- The Vitamin D Pooling Project (VDPP) is conducting analyses of associations between serum vitamin D concentrations (25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) and development of certain rarer cancers – pancreatic, ovarian, upper gastrointestinal, endometrial, and renal cancers, and lymphoma. This nested case-control study includes about 5,100 cases and 5,100 matched controls from 10 participating cohorts. The participation of eight of the cohorts was funded by EGRP beginning in the fall of 2007, and two of the cohorts are supported by DCEG.
Contact Us
Contact Nonye Harvey, M.P.H., for questions related to the Cohort Consortium. For questions related to other EGRP-supported consortia, contact Daniela Seminara, Ph.D., M.P.H., EGRP's Scientific Consortia Coordinator.
* DCEG is a partner in this initiative.
