In December 2013, Cancer52 wrote a letter to Sir John Chisholm, Executive Chair of Genomics England, expressing its alarm that the 100K Genome Project would be limited to lung, breast and colorectal cancers, whilst ignoring rare and less common cancers.
Cancer52 asked Sir John to provide the criteria used for selecting cancer types for the 100K Sequencing initiative as well as an understanding of the process that will be used to select future cancer sites; and how representations for inclusion could be made to Genomics England Ltd.
Cancer52 received a response from Sir John in January 2014 explaining that they will work on a pilot study with prostate, lung breast, colorectal and ovarian cancer to be sure they can get sufficient samples to test processes and to have the chance of deriving meaningful results before a planned start of the main programme in early 2015.
Sir John did however assure Cancer52 that they intend to focus on rare cancers as part of the main programme and will update Cancer52 after Easter explaining what the approach will be.