Current Research

The Forgotten Cancers Project was designed to facilitate research into less common cancers. Cancer Council Victoria researchers are currently collaborating with two international consortia, the Pancreatic Cancer Cohort Consortium (PanScan) and the International Lymphoma Epidemiology Consortium (InterLymph).  We are actively exploring possibilities for collaboration with other national and international consortiums.  

PanScan

The Pancreatic Cancer Cohort Consortium consists of more than a dozen prospective epidemiologic cohort studies within the NCI Cohort Consortium, whose leaders work together to investigate the etiology and natural history of pancreas cancer. The Pancreatic Cancer Cohort Consortium was formed in 2006 by investigators for the initial purpose of launching a genome-wide association study (GWAS) known as PanScan. The PanScan study has since expanded to include a collaboration with investigators leading case-control studies in order to achieve the large sample sizes required to identify novel genetic susceptibility loci for pancreas cancer.

InterLymph

The International Consortium of Investigators Working on Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma Epidemiologic Studies (InterLymph), is a group of international investigators researching lymphoid malignancies such as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and multiple myeloma. In recent years, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and pooled analyses have enabled great progress in identifying genetic variants associated with risk of specific NHL subtypes. InterLymph plans to build and capitalise on this progress by conducting a larger and more comprehensive GWAS to identify the genetic variants that contribute to the development of NHL and influence survival. It is hoped this, turn, will more fully explain familial risk of NHL. The Forgotten Cancers Project is a collaborating partner in this research, which will include data from 22 studies on around 9,000 people with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. This will then be expanded to include other types of lymphoid malignancies.  In total, we have contributed 1,297 cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other types of lymphoid malignancies.