Cancer is a complex disease that impacts lives of millions across the globe. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC),

1 in 5 people develop cancer during their lifetime, and 1 in 8 men and 1 in 11 women die from the disease,

making it the major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The disease is compounded by issues such as rapid urbanization, ageing population, inactive and unhealthy lifestyles, indoor and outdoor air pollution, majorly impacting the middle-to-low socio-economic countries including India.  

In 2006, the National Institute of Health (NIH) launched The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to explore the entire spectrum of genomic changes involved in human cancer.  The project molecularly characterized over 20,000 primary cancer and matched normal samples from 33 cancer types. 

Why Indian Cancer Genome Atlas (ICGA)?

TCGA is established in the US and has data primarily from local US population and does not include enough Indian samples. It is well established that Indian population is diverse – environmentally, ethnically, and genetically and we need data about our own population. These uniquely different characteristics of Indian cancers with respect their epidemiology, genetics, clinic-pathology and treatment outcomes have not been co-related with their multi-omics profiles in a systematic method. Thus, an India-specific cancer database is better equipped to diagnose, treat, and prevent cancer in India.  

Cancer is devastating for individuals and families and is a major health burden on society specially in middle-to-low income populations in South Asian countries such as India, it is the need of the hour to conduct such large-scale studies to gain more insights into this disease and its prevention. 

In this public health effort, high quality meta-data of cancer patients and biospecimens (blood, cancer tissues) representing various clinical scenarios are being ethically collected from various geographical regions of India. Big data generated after multi-omics profiling will be curated and analyzed for correlation with clinicopathological profiles. Such curated databases will be then open sourced to the Indian and global cancer research communities. 

The successful creation and quality of the proposed open-source multi-omics database of Indian cancers is entirely dependent on the uniformity, sanctity, and integrity of the meta-data and biospecimens collected from various geographical locations. Hence, a pan-India consortium of partners is being established, which operates as a ‘hub-and-spoke’ model. The work plan comprises of 5 major representative domains: 

• Primary data and sample collection centers in regional cancer hospitals/clinics (based on a pan-India consortium) 
• Central biobank and sample processing unit 
• Database and analytics center 
• Multi-omics data-generation center 
• Capacity building: short courses and hands-on training workshops on all aspects of the project and more importantly, on effective and timely use of the meta-data collected as above for patient care