The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is recognizing the founding members of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the current project team with 2020 AACR Team Science Awards. These teams will be honored during the AACR Virtual Annual Meeting II on June 24.
The Cancer Genome Atlas was launched in 2006 as a joint endeavor between the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute. The program was created to bring together multidisciplinary teams of researchers from across many institutions with the goal of improving understanding of cancer by cataloging genetic alterations found in tumor samples.
According to the NCI, TCGA has characterized more than 20,000 primary cancers and matched normal samples from more than 11,000 patients across 33 different cancer types. The effort has united 20 collaborating institutions from the U.S. and Canada, and the data remains freely available the public.
The AACR Team Science Award was established by AACR and Eli Lilly and Company to acknowledge and catalyze the growing importance of interdisciplinary teams to the understanding of cancer and translating research discoveries into clinical applications.
The first 2020 AACR Team Science Award is given to the 41 founding members of TCGA. The second AACR Team Science Award is given to the 130 members of TCGA’s current project team.