Within the framework of the NCI-sponsored Cohort Consortium, investigators from 12 prospective epidemiologic cohorts formed the Pancreatic Cancer Cohort Consortium in 2006. The groups study, also known as 'PanScan,' is funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and involves a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of common genetic variants to identify markers of susceptibility to pancreatic cancer. In 2007, the study was expanded to include 8 case-control studies. The study team includes scientists from the cohorts comprising the Consortium and NCI. PanScan 1 and 2 were conducted in 12 cohort studies and 8 case-control studies, leading to the discovery of four novel regions in the genome associated with risk for pancreatic adenocarcinoma. We recently conducted a third GWAS and replication study of PanScan. In our third GWAS, we performed a multistage genome-wide association study (GWAS) including 7,683 individuals with pancreatic cancer and 14,397 controls of European descent. PanScan 3 included more recently identified incident pancreatic cancer cases with controls drawn from 14 cohorts from the cohort consortium, including the 10 prospective cohorts who participated in PanScan 1 and 2, and four newly joined cohorts with replication. Four new loci reached genome-wide significance. In total we have identified 8 new susceptibility loci for pancreatic cancer.In order to accelerate the pace of discovery and characterization of genetic markers associated with pancreatic cancer risk, the genotype results and executive summaries of individual SNP analyses will be posted on a controlled-access web site, available to the biomedical research community in accord with NIH policy.
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