PCAWG: One of the most extensive cancer genome research projects

The International collaborative study will lead to a better understanding & treatment options for Cancer

Devising a treatment for any disease depends on a comprehensive understanding and this is exactly what this massive project intends to do. The ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Project (PCAWG, or the Pan-Cancer Project) involves an international collaboration of 1300 scientists from 37 countries, which analyzed 2600 genomes of 38 different tumor types of cancer. The six-year-long project included 52 members of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard contributing to their expertise to the largest publicly available whole-genome dataset in the cancer genomics field.

While there has been a lot of studies being done to study the causes, progression, and treatment of the disease, none of these come close to the scale of this endeavor. Even the previous genome studies have been restricted to 1% that codes the exome proteins. This project ambitiously tries to map out the other 99% of the genome that regulates the activity of genes.

16 working groups were created to ponder over the extensive set of data. The most positive outcome of the study was the determination that the cancer genome is finite despite its…