Cancer researchers can browse and access germline genetic association data from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Screening Trial via the Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) Explorer, PLCO Atlas.

Currently the GWAS Explorer hosts association results for 90 diseases and traits from 110,562 participants in PLCO, including a comprehensive list of cancer types and subtypes defined by organ site, etiology, and pathology. Analyses of additional traits are in progress and association results will be publicly posted as they become available. Users can quickly visualize and download aggregated results to extract knowledge and insights from the data.

Read more and learn how to use GWAS Explorer.

The PLCO Atlas is the product of the NCI-sponsored PLCO Cancer Screening Trial to investigate the impact of cancer screening on cancer-related mortality. It serves as a resource of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable (FAIR) genetic and phenotypic data. All PLCO Atlas summary statistic data are publicly available on the GWAS Explorer website.

“This resource is the result of an extraordinary collaboration among a multidisciplinary team from the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG) and CBIIT developers and programmers,” said Mitchell Machiela, Sc.D., M.P.H., who is an investigator in DCEG’s Integrative Tumor Epidemiology Branch. “We hope the infrastructure will assist future genome-wide association studies, making it easy and efficient for them to share association summary statistics on a range of cancer and cancer-associated outcomes.”