Extract

Five years have passed since the strategy meeting that launched the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC)4 in October 2007. The intervening 5 years have been a time of remarkable progress in cancer genome research, with great strides having been made toward understanding the mutational landscape of cancer and the early adoption of genome analyses in the clinical management of patients. Although progress in the field of cancer genomics has received wide coverage in the scientific literature and lay media, not much has been written about the events that led to the founding of the international consortium. Given our involvement in these events, we were asked to look back at the circumstances that attracted many of the world's leading cancer agencies, genome and cancer scientists, ethicists, computer scientists, and other experts to work together. The common purposes were to accelerate the discovery of many new cancer biomarkers and potential cancer targets and to spur the development of new clinical tests and therapeutic interventions that would benefit cancer patients worldwide.

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