This article replaces an earlier version that reported funding solely for IGC.
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The International Genomics Consortium (IGC) in Phoenix, Ariz., and the Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital (NCH) in Columbus, Ohio, have been awarded stimulus grants from the National Institutes of Health totaling nearly $80 million over five years to support the Cancer Genome Atlas Program.
IGC and NCH will manage biospecimens and samples for TCGA, as well as provide support services to the National Cancer Institute for researchers involved in TCGA.
The awards, which are funded in part by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will be spread over five years and will provide IGC up to $37.5 million and NCH up to $41.4 million, if the option to extend is exercised after the base period of 18 months. For the base period, IGC will receive $12.3 million and NCH will receive $11.5 million.
IGC and NCH will provide support services for TCGA by establishing Biospecimen Core Resources (BCRs) for receiving tissue and data from the multiple Tissue Source Site networks. They will provide storage, quality control, processing, and shipping of analytes to genome characterization and sequencing centers for TCGA.
The biospecimen core centers' tasks include being an interface between TCGA and tissue source sites; ensuring and verifying that TCGA subject guidelines and protections have been followed; ensuring that all biospecimens meet standards; collecting clinical information about patients and their cancer samples; extracting and distributing DNA and RNA analytes from tissue samples and sending them to sequencing and characterization centers; and contributing to the leadership of the overall TCGA project.