COGENT (COlorectal cancer GENeTics): an international consortium to study the role of polymorphic variation on the risk of colorectal cancer

Tomlinson IP, Dunlop M, Campbell H, Zanke B, Gallinger S, Hudson T, Koessler T, Pharoah PD, Niittymaki I, Tuupanen S, Aaltonen LA, Hemminki K, Lindblom A, Forsti A, Sieber O, Lipton L, van Wezel T, Morreau H, Wijnen JT, Devilee P, Matsuda K, Nakamura Y, Castellvi-Bel S, Ruiz-Ponte C, Castells A, Carracedo A, Ho JW, Sham P, Hofstra RM, Vodicka P, Brenner H, Hampe J, Schafmayer C, Tepel J, Schreiber S, Volzke H, Lerch MM, Schmidt CA, Buch S, Moreno V, Villanueva CM, Peterlongo P, Radice P, Echeverry MM, Velez A, Carvajal-Carmona L, Scott R, Penegar S, Broderick P, Tenesa A, Houlston RS (2010) COGENT (COlorectal cancer GENeTics): an international consortium to study the role of polymorphic variation on the risk of colorectal cancer. British journal of cancer 102:447-454

It is now recognised that a part of the inherited risk of colorectal cancer (CRC) can be explained by the co-inheritance of low-penetrance genetic variants. The accumulated experience to date in identifying these variants has served to highlight difficulties in conducting statistically and methodologically rigorous studies and follow-up analyses. The COGENT (COlorectal cancer GENeTics) consortium includes 20 research groups in Europe, Australia, the Americas, China and Japan. The overarching goal of COGENT is to identify and characterise low-penetrance susceptibility variants for CRC through association-based analyses. In this study, we review the rationale for identifying low-penetrance variants for CRC and our proposed strategy for establishing COGENT.