Nine countries and the European Commission have founded the International Cancer Genome Consortium, it was revealed Tuesday. Australia, Canada, China, France, India, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States have pledged to collaborate for about a decade to generate high-quality genomic data on up to 50 types of cancer.

Each of the nine countries will have to perform studies on 500 patients, with an estimated cost of $20 million. The main advantage is that the member countries will collaborate to ensure that their studies do not overlap and in the end they will all benefit from each other's genetic data.

"Clearly, there is an urgent need to reduce cancer's terrible toll. To help meet that need, the Consortium will use new genome analysis technologies to produce comprehensive catalogs of the genetic mutations involved in the world's major types of cancer," said Thomas Hudson, MD, of the ICGC Secretariat, which is based in Toronto.

"With the advent of new faster DNA sequencing technologies the ICGC now has set the hugely ambitious aim of fully sequencing thousands of cancer genomes to catalogue all the changes in DNA and obtain a complete picture of the abnormalities that lead to cancer," said Mike Stratton, co-head of the British project.

The International Cancer Genome Consortium builds upon the success of Britain's Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge. As such, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has issued a statement welcoming the new international expansion.

An important issue is that all consortium participants will agree not to file any patent applications or make other intellectual property claims on primary data from ICGC projects.