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Cohorts are groups of individuals followed over time to track disease occurrence. Researchers periodically collect medical information and biological specimens from the participants. Because large cohort studies are expensive, few exist. NCI's Cohort Consortium brings 23 public and private cohort studies together to make the best use of the wealth of information available within each.
In 2003, the Consortium received approval to fund its first initiative, which is designed to do two things. First is to test feasibility - to learn whether independent investigators working with different cohorts can share data effectively to answer research questions and confirm findings from one cohort to another.
Second is to look at how genes interact with hormones, growth factors, and other risk factors in breast and prostate cancer development. Researchers will draw data from 897,000 people enrolled in 10 cohorts, 8,850 with prostate cancer and 6,160 with breast cancer. They will look for undiscovered inherited gene variants that may contribute to the development of these two cancers, perhaps through interactions with levels of hormones and growth factors, other risk factors such as family history and age at which a woman had her first child, environmental exposures, and health behaviors that work together to increase cancer risk. The two cancers were chosen because of similarities in the causal pathways for both. The large numbers of persons to be studied are necessary in order to tease out the associations among the various risk factors of potential interest. Only by combining data from many thousands of people will it be possible to begin to determine the role of interactions between genetic determinants and environmental factors in the development of human cancer.
Two of the cohorts are from NCI's Division of Epidemiology and Genetics. The others are the American Cancer Society/Cancer Prevention Study-II; the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition Study (EPIC) coordinated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France; Harvard University's Nurses Health Study I and II, Physicians Health Study I and II, and Health Professional's Follow-up Study; and the Multiethnic Cohort Study conducted at the Universities of Hawaii and Southern California. The laboratory-based genetic component of the study is being led by the CEPH in Paris, France, the Whitehead Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NCI's Core Genotyping Facility.
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