At the SCC, the research named the “Project HOPE” has been conducted since 2014. It is to analyze the tumor cells resected at the surgeries and acquire genomic information. The purposes of the analyses include finding out gene mutations causing cancers, and learning more about what cancer is so that the information can be used for cancer treatments. So far, genomic information from various types of cancers has been collected from about 8,000 cases, which have been analyzed for entire exon. With the researches in this field conducted over many years, it is now made clear that there is a difference in cancer genomes between the westerners and the Japanese even for the same cancer type, and therefore, it is essential to use the genomic information of the Japanese for evaluating their cancer gene mutations. In these circumstances, the “Japanese Cancer Genome Atlas (JCGA),” the cross-cancer-type database, has been built out based on the entire exon analysis results from 5,000 cases with 134 types of cancer. This is supposed to be used for evaluating gene mutations detected at the onco-panel tests, as well as for the expert panel involving the specialist in cancer genomic medicine, which is being established at many medical institutions in Japan. In addition, as the database is published in Japanese, it is expected that the use of it will help the public have better understanding about cancer.
