India is participating in International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) with oral cancer as the site for research. In view of its high prevalence in India and the existence of possible interacting environmental factors, India will focus on oral cancer as a part of the ICGC activities. In particular, India will be focusing on the gingivo-buccal cancer.
The goal of ICGC is to obtain a comprehensive description of genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic changes in 50 different tumour types and/or subtypes which are of clinical and societal importance across the globe. The ICGC will make its data rapidly and freely available to the global research community. It's main criteria for prioritising cancer types include knowing its impact, including incidence and mortality rates, availability of therapies and age of onset; scientific interest; and feasibility, which includes the ability to obtain enough high-quality samples to conduct a large-scale project.
The lead institutions in India who will be part of this project are National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG) where most of the genomics work will be carried out and Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC), Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai where most of the patient characterisation, tissue collection and some profiling. will be done. Dr Partha P Majumder, director, NIBMG is the National co-ordinator of this project. He along with Dr Rajiv Sarin, Tata Memorial Hospital will be the Principal Investigators. The project is being funded by the Government of India, through the DBT and about one crore is already invested for this project.
Dr Majumder informed that the work on this project has just commenced and the first samples have been sent by ACTREC to NIBMG were genomics work on these samples has begun.
Speaking about the importance of this project, he said, "Since oral cancer is highly prevalent in India with genomic susceptibilities and environmental triggers (such as tobacco chewing), an understanding of the genomic factors and their interactions with environmental triggers will help reduce disease burden in the population by identifying individuals at high-risk before onset of oral cancer, and aggressive modulation of their life-styles to prevent environmental triggers."
The ICGC has been organised as an international effort to harmonise the large number of projects that have the common aim of elucidating comprehensively the genomic changes present in many forms of cancers that contribute to the burden of disease in people throughout the world. Its main main focus is to create a catalogue of mutations in cancer. The expectations are that the outcome of the research carried out by the members of the ICGC will be extensive.
