) Duke University, Emory University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) are applying to become members of the Cancer Genetics Network. We will combine our patient resources, establish cooperative clinical practices and accrue subjects to the common Network registry. The clinical resources of our Network Center are very large; together with our affiliates, our institutional networks care for more than 20,000 cancer cases each year. Our institutions have unique access to population-based registries, including state cancer registries, populations taking part in genetic and molecular epidemiology studies and SEER registries. We draw from both urban and rural communities and our patient population is directly comparable to the ethnic profile southeastern United States. Our Carolina and Georgia Network Center brings a breadth of experience in human genetics to the process of planning national Network projects. Emory University has a nationally recognized program of Medical Genetics and a regional Medical Genetics Laboratory for specialized molecular and genetic testing. The University of North Carolina has a remarkable School of Public Health, an active outreach program to foster health care and several useful population-based registries of cancer. Duke has vast clinical operations and a basic science faculty with expertise in genomics, statistical genetics and molecular biology. Our Center already has captured large populations of patients with well-documented family histories of cancer. We are conducting a clinic trial of genetic counseling strategies and have on-site, low cost testing facilities for breast cancer susceptibility. Our investigators have developed case ascertainment methods to capture patients from our registries for entry in research studies. We have received substantial institutional support for genetic testing, clinical cancer genetic services and our educational programs. The people in our Center will contribute to all aspects of Network planning and are ready to modify our approaches to align our Center with consensus reached by the Network planning activities. Within this application, we propose to take advantage of our expertise and resources to ascertain registrants by augmenting referral services and by piloting the selective use of our unique registries.
