Objective

The National Cancer Institute established the Cancer Genetics Network (CGN) to support collaborative investigations into the genetic basis of cancer susceptibility, explore mechanisms to integrate this new knowledge into medical practice, and identify ways of addressing the associated psychosocial, ethical, legal, and public health issues.

Subjects and methods

The CGN has developed the complex infrastructure required to support the projects, including the establishment of guidelines and policies, uniform methods, standard questionnaires to be used by all of the centers, and a standard format for submission of data to the Informatics Center. Cancer patients and their family members have been invited to enroll and be included in a pool of potential study participants. The Information Technology Group is responsible for support of the design, implementation, and maintenance of the multicenter Network-wide research protocols.

Results

As of January 2004, the CGN contained data on 23,995 probands (participants) and 425,798 family members. As a resource for cancer genetic studies, the CGN has a large number of probands and first-degree relatives with and without cancer and with multiple ethnicities. Different study designs can be used including case-control, case-case, and family studies.

Conclusions

The unique resources of the CGN are available for studies on cancer genetic susceptibility, translational research, and behavioral research. The CGN is now at a point where approved collaborators may have access to enrolled patients and their families for special studies, as well as to the clinical, environmental and family cancer history data banked in the Informatics Center.

Objective

An exploratory analysis of co-aggregation of cancers using registry-based data.

Methods

We utilized sibships from over 18,000 families who had been recruited to the NCI-sponsored multi-institutional Cancer Genetics Network. The analysis assesses co-aggregation at the individual and family level and adjusts for ascertainment.

Results

We found statistically significant familial co-aggregation of lung cancer with pancreatic (adjusted p < 0.001), prostate (adjusted p < 0.003), and colorectal cancers (adjusted p = 0.004). In addition, we found significant familial co-aggregation of pancreatic and colorectal cancers (adjusted p = 0.018), and co-aggregation of hematopoietic and (non-ovarian) gynecologic cancers (adjusted p = 0.01).

Conclusion

This analysis identified familial aggregation of cancers for which a genetic component has yet to be established.