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TCGA Cancers Selected for Study

TCGA cancers selected for study

Credit: National Cancer Institute

The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) selected the following cancers for study based on specific criteria that include:

  • Poor prognosis
  • Overall public health impact
  • Availability of samples meeting standards for patient consent
  • Availability of samples meeting standards for quality and quantity that include:
    • Primary, untreated tumor with a source of matched normal tissue or blood sample
    • Frozen, sufficiently sized, resection samples
    • Samples composed of at least 80% tumor nuclei (threshold later lowered to 60% with improved sequencing technology and computational methods)
  • With support from patients, patient advocacy groups, and doctors, many rare cancers were also included

As the program has completed, TCGA is no longer accepting samples for characterization. NCI's Biorepositories & Biospecimens Research Branch offers more information and opportunities for donating blood, tissues, and other biospecimens.

Unfortunately, TCGA cannot accomodate requests for analytes or tissue.

Below is the list of cancers selected for study by TCGA. For each cancer type, TCGA published an overview of the characterizations performed and an initial analysis of the data. Supplemental and associated data files for these so-called "marker papers" can be found in the GDC.

TCGA's Cancers Selected for Study
Cancer Type Studied # Cases Characterized
(# Cases in Marker Paper)
Publication
Acute Myeloid Leukemia 200 (200) NEJM 2013
Adrenocortical Carcinoma 92 (91) Cancer Cell 2016
Bladder Urothelial Carcinoma 412 (131) Nature 2014, Cell 2017
Breast Ductal Carcinoma 778 (430) Nature 2012
Breast Lobular Carcinoma 201 (127) Cell 2015
Cervical Carcinoma 307 (228) Nature 2017
Cholangiocarcinoma 51 (38) Cell Reports 2017
Colorectal Adenocarcinoma 633 (276) Nature 2012
Esophageal Carcinoma 185 (164) Nature 2017
Gastric Adenocarcinoma 443 (295) Nature 2014
Glioblastoma Multiforme 617 (206) Nature 2008, Cell 2013
Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma 528 (279) Nature 2015
Hepatocellular Carcinoma 377 (363) Cell 2017
Chromophobe Renal Cell Carcinoma 113 (66) Cancer Cell 2014
Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma 537 (446) Nature 2013
Papillary Renal Cell Carcinoma 291 (161) NEJM 2016
Lower Grade Glioma 516 (293) NEJM 2015
Lung Adenocarcinoma 585 (230) Nature 2014, Nature Genetics 2016
Lung Squamous Cell Carcinoma 504 (178) Nature 2012, Nature Genetics 2016
Mesothelioma 74 (87) Cancer Discovery 2018
Ovarian Serous Adenocarcinoma 608 (489) Nature 2011
Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma 185 (150) Cancer Cell 2017
Paraganglioma & Pheochromocytoma 179 (173) Cancer Cell 2017
Prostate Adenocarcinoma 500 (333) Cell 2015
Sarcoma 261 (206) Cell 2017
Skin Cutaneous Melanoma 470 (331) Cell 2015
Testicular Germ Cell Cancer 150 (137) Cell Reports 2018
Thymoma 124 (117) Cancer Cell 2018
Thyroid Papillary Carcinoma 507 (496) Cell 2014
Uterine Carcinosarcoma 57 (57) Cancer Cell 2017
Uterine Corpus Endometrioid Carcinoma 560 (373) Nature 2013
Uveal Melanoma 80 (80) Cancer Cell 2017

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