The international consortium Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study (COGS) has had 13 papers published this month in Nature Genetics, representing a significant advance in our understanding of genetic susceptibility to three hormone-related cancers: breast, ovarian and prostate cancer.
BRC-supported research has been key to COGS, which claims to be the largest genotyping project in the world, targeting identification of genetic alterations that influence the risk of common cancers.
The study used data from the multi-centre United Kingdom Ovarian Cancer Population Study run by Professor Usha Menon (UKOPS) and Dr Aleksandra Gentry-Maharaj.
Set up in 2006 with funding from the Eve Appeal and support from the BRC, UKOPS has collected detailed epidemiological data and samples from over 1,200 ovarian cancer patients and 2,500 healthy controls.
The COGS collaboration includes the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC), of which Professor Menon was one of the founding members.
OCAC currently comprises 47 groups contributing samples and data to decipher the genetic and epidemiological predisposition to ovarian cancer. UCL has contributed to 35 OCAC papers over the last few years, including the first Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) for ovarian cancer.
All 13 papers from the COGS consortium can be found in Nature Genetics.
