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Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium

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The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (abbreviated WTCCC) is a collaboration between fifty research groups in the United Kingdom in the field of human genetics. Established in 2005, the WTCCC aims to conduct genome-wide association studies (GWASs) to shed light on the genetic architecture of common human diseases.[1] The founding chairman of the consortium was University of Oxford statistician Peter Donnelly. The consortium was funded by £9 million from the Wellcome Trust.[2] According to the consortium's website, it has identified "approximately 90" new susceptibility loci for common human diseases.[3]

The consortium's initial goal was to conduct large GWASs for eight common human diseases: tuberculosis, coronary heart disease, type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, bipolar disorder and hypertension. These GWASs included a total of 19,000 subjects, of whom 2,000 had one of the eight diseases and an additional 3,000 served as controls.[2] The study participants were genotyped using Affymetrix's GeneChip Human Mapping 500K Array Set, and genotype calling was conducted with the Chiamo algorithm.[4]

The results of the WTCCC's initial research were reported in Nature in 2007. The research identified 24 genetic association "signals" that were statistically significant at P < 5 × 10−7.[5][6] At the time, this was the largest study ever conducted of the genetics of human diseases.[7] In announcing the study's findings at a London news conference, Donnelly said, "If you think of the genome as a very long road that you are trying to find your way along in the dark, previously we have only been able to turn lights on in a small number of places, but now we can turn on lights in a large number of places— in this case half a million lights".[8] The 2007 Nature paper was later named "paper of the year" by the Lancet,[9] and it led to the WTCCC being named "research leader of the year" by Scientific American.[10]

References

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  1. ^ "Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium". University College London. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
  2. ^ a b "Researchers set to find 'genetic signposts' for eight diseases" (Press release). Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium. 28 September 2005. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
  3. ^ "Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium website". Retrieved 23 November 2018.
  4. ^ Browning, Brian L.; Browning, Sharon R. (26 January 2008). "Haplotypic analysis of Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium data". Human Genetics. 123 (3): 273–280. doi:10.1007/s00439-008-0472-1. ISSN 0340-6717. PMC 2384233. PMID 18224336.
  5. ^ Burton, Paul R.; Clayton, David G.; Cardon, Lon R.; Craddock, Nick; Deloukas, Panos; Duncanson, Audrey; Kwiatkowski, Dominic P.; McCarthy, Mark I.; Ouwehand, Willem H. (7 June 2007). "Genome-wide association study of 14,000 cases of seven common diseases and 3,000 shared controls". Nature. 447 (7145): 661–678. Bibcode:2007Natur.447..661B. doi:10.1038/nature05911. ISSN 0028-0836. PMC 2719288. PMID 17554300.
  6. ^ Gibson, Greg; Goldstein, David B. (November 2007). "Human Genetics: The Hidden Text of Genome-wide Associations". Current Biology. 17 (21): R929 – R932. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2007.08.044. ISSN 0960-9822. PMID 17983573.
  7. ^ "Largest ever study of genetics of common diseases published today". Wellcome Trust (Press release). 6 June 2007. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
  8. ^ "Genes linked to 7 common diseases". CBC News. 7 June 2007. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
  9. ^ Summerskill, William (February 2008). "Paper of the year 2007". The Lancet. 371 (9610): 370–371. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(08)60183-x. ISSN 0140-6736. S2CID 53251471.
  10. ^ Mossman, Kaspar (January 2008). "The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, U.K.". Scientific American. 298 (1): 42. Bibcode:2008SciAm.298a..42M. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0108-42a.
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