The mission of the GDC is to provide the cancer research community with a repository and computational platform for cancer researchers who need to understand cancer, its clinical progression, and response to therapy.
The NCI Center for Cancer Genomics (CCG) was established to spearhead the NCI's efforts in generating crucial datasets for cataloging alterations seen in human tumors, coordinating data unification and sharing, and supporting the development of analytical tools and computational approaches to enhance the understanding of large-scale, multidimensional data. The CCG backs several major cancer genome research programs including The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), the Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments (TARGET) program, the Cancer Genome Characterization Initiative (CGCI), and the Human Cancer Models Initiative (HCMI).
Although CCG programs extensively characterized genomic changes in various human cancers; these characterizations were previously housed in separate repositories, in different formats, and with varied data management systems. To streamline these efforts, the NCI launched the GDC in June 2016, providing the cancer research community with a unified data service for the receipt, quality control, integration, storage, and redistribution of standardized cancer genomic data sets from NCI programs. In June 2024, GDC 2.0 was introduced, featuring a “cohort-centric” approach that enables researchers to create custom sets of cases and conduct gene- and variant-level data analysis directly within the web-based GDC Data Portal.
The GDC was developed through the collaboration of several organizations with valuable contributions from community bioinformatics leaders collectively known as the "GDC Team". For more information on the GDC and other CCG-supported programs, visit the CCG Programs Site.