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A nationwide cancer genetic database will be established after 2013
Medical expert of the article
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
The pilot phase of the project will cover 9,000 people, and the national system itself will be created after 2013.
This September, the first phase of the Stratified Medicine Programme, organised by the charity Cancer Research UK with support from the British government, AstraZeneca and Pfizer, will begin in the UK. The initiative involves creating a personalised genetic database of cancers.
The remaining material from biopsies of 9,000 cancer patients (suffering from breast, colorectal, lung, prostate, ovarian and skin cancers) will be sent regularly to three specialist centres and subjected to genetic testing. Scientists from the NHS and private companies will have access to a large volume of data to study changes in cancer cells over time. The individualisation of genetic profiling will ultimately benefit patients, who (in the second stage of the project) will receive drugs developed personally for them.
The second stage of the Stratified Medicine Programme, to be launched in 2013, will create a UK-wide database of all cancer patients. “Being able to work with a sample of 3,000 patients, with access to DNA data from their tumours, their medical records, their treatments and medications, is invaluable,” said Dr Gareth Morgan, a haematologist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London (one of the project’s “technological hubs” where the material will be sent for analysis).
British scientists are eagerly awaiting the rollout of the system, as they know from experience the usefulness and effectiveness of such databases. The General Practice Research Database (GRPD), which receives anonymised data from British GPs, has repeatedly proven its uniqueness in scientific research.
Systems similar to the one being created in Britain already exist in other countries, but their coverage is inferior to that planned for the Stratified Medicine Programme: in the USA, private clinics have databases; the French National Cancer Institute (INCa) runs a program to collect tumor tissue samples from patients with certain types of cancer (melanoma, lung and colorectal cancer)...
The uniqueness of the Stratified Medicine Programme lies in the fact that the system being created is oriented towards the needs of both researchers and treating physicians and their patients.
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