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Research

Center for Cancer Genome Discovery

  • Matthew Meyerson, MD, PhD, and William Hahn, MD, PhD

  • The Center for Cancer Genome Discovery (CCGD) is the research and development group within the Precision Cancer Medicine effort at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Boston Children's Hospital. As part of that effort, CCGD continually evaluates and develops new sequencing assays and technologies, for both research and clinical use, which allows us to assist investigators pursuing novel questions and new techniques.

    The three main components of our mission are:

    • Technology development: To develop new technologies for the analysis of cancer genomes
    • Collaborative research: To provide access to these genomic technologies to basic, translational, and clinical investigators at Dana-Farber and beyond
    • Translation: To translate technologies to the clinical setting

    Services

    The Center for Cancer Genome Discovery can provide collaborators with comprehensive services that include personal consultation on the type of sequencing most suitable for project needs, preparation of sequencing libraries, and custom bait set design for targeted sequencing. Additionally, sequencing libraries prepared by CCGD are provided assistance with bioinformatic analysis. Sample types accepted include collaborator-prepared libraries or purified nucleic acid, including difficult samples such as cfDNA and FFPE nucleic acid.

  • Our Research Focus

    researchers at computers in a lab

    Services

    At CCGD, we can provide technical insight to help create a focused project plan that leverages our NGS expertise to obtain high-quality data from difficult sample types such as archived FFPE material and cell-free DNA. We can perform both whole genome and targeted sequencing, including custom hybrid capture bait set design.

    lab equipment

    Bioinformatics

    Joint sharing of bioinformatic resources with our clinical counterpart, Profile, enables us to use many of the same analysis tools that are employed to identify actionable mutations in patient tumors. We can provide analysis-ready BAM files or perform our standard data analysis, which includes variant reporting and genomic rearrangement detection.

    researcher writing on glass in lab

    Project Proposal and Sample Submission

    Researchers are encouraged to schedule a consultation to discuss their project and to submit a proposal as a guide for directing the course of NGS experiments. Project proposals and sample submissions can be initiated through our submission website.

    Profile researcher

    Profile

    Since our inception, CCGD has sought to take our research findings and inject them into a clinical setting for patient treatment. Profile, a research project for precision medicine, represents the culmination of the translational research efforts of CCGD. Profile performs NGS-based profiling of patients to detect cancer mutations, providing precise information to better inform treatment.

    CCGD researcher reaching over lab equipment

    Cell-Free DNA

    CCGD has been conducting research both internally and with research collaborators to develop methods for cell-free DNA (cfDNA) that maximizes the sensitivity achievable with this difficult input type. We are currently developing methods to detect PCR and base calling errors to increase confidence in mutations detected in samples of low tumor content.

    CCGD researcher at a computer

    Research & Development Projects and News

    At CCGD, we continually evaluate and develop new NGS technologies that can better detect cancer mutations. In addition to process improvements, we are actively engaged in several projects to increase our research capabilities with the co-objective of further developing new methods for clinical use at Profile for precision medicine.

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