Cancer epidemiology consortia (CEC) provide unique opportunities for advancing cancer research by virtue of the large sample size of study participants and the synergy resulting from the interdisciplinary expertise of the membership. Consortia can support pooled analyses or meta-analyses with sample sizes large enough to achieve significant results, promote spinoff research projects, and yield faster ?translation? of results into clinical and public health applications because of the associated biobanks and outreach to patient populations. They can rapidly respond to advances in knowledge and high-throughput technologies, such as those used in genome-wide association studies and next-generation sequencing. Networks can also foster interdisciplinary and international collaborations leading to complex, integrative meta-epidemiology research. Lastly, consortia can assemble databases that are useful for developing and applying new statistical methods for large data sets. The National Cancer Institute (NCI), Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS), Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program (EGRP) supports national and international research consortia focusing on cancer interdisciplinary and translational research
