The ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG), known as the Pan-Cancer Project, is an international collaboration to identify common patterns of mutation in more than 2,600 whole cancer genomes from the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). It builds upon the previous work of those initiatives, which predominantly concentrated on the regions of the genome that code for proteins.

Researchers aim to understand the genomic changes in many forms of cancer worldwide, with a view to enabling further research into causes, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancers.

The Pan-Cancer Project has explored the nature and consequences of DNA variations in cancer, across the entire genome, from both protein-coding genes and from areas of DNA that do not code for proteins. The Pan-Cancer Project is the most comprehensive analysis of the non-coding regions of cancer genomes performed to date.

DNA changes can be inherited (germline) or appear during a person’s life (somatic), and the Pan-Cancer Project is investigating both types of these variations in DNA of cancer cells, looking at areas involved in regulating genes, sites for non-coding RNA and large-scale structural rearrangements in the genome.