The Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology is one of the leading centres for research into the genetics of cancer.  The Centre carries out association studies in breast, ovarian, prostate and other cancers, to identify and characterise susceptibility loci.  It is the co-ordinating centre for three large international consortia in these areas - BCAC (breast cancer), PRACTICAL (prostate cancer) and CIMBA (BRCA1/2 carriers) – that contain data from over 200,000 individuals from over 100 studies.  Laboratory analysis takes place at Strangeways Laboratory and at collaborating laboratories.  These studies include genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and large-scale follow-up, and fine-scale mapping. The Centre is also developing new studies based on resequencing to study rare variants and cancer susceptibility.

The Centre’s aims are: to identify cancer predisposition genes; to define their frequencies, associated risks and their interaction with environmental risk factors and to evaluate strategies for avoiding inherited risks of cancer.  It is also actively involved in developing statistical methodology.

The Centre is primarily funded by Cancer Research UK.

News

See Prof Easton’s interview for ecancer.tv at the recent 2012 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium here.