President Obama announced UNC as one of 12 centers awarded between 13 and 20-million dollars through the Cancer Genome Atlas Grant.

The researchers at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center will now collaborate to gain a better understanding of the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells.  Dr. Charles Perou, associate professor of genetics and pathology at UNC, says UNC will focus on gene expression profiling.

Perou says one of the major benefits of the Atlas Grant program is the ability to use multiple cutting-edge technologies to study cancer at once.  These technologies are usually very expensive. 

Each individual center will bring data which, once put together, will provide more insight than any one center could provide on its own.  Perou says they will be looking at 20,000 tumors to gather their data.

Perou says UNC and Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center could not have gotten this national grant if not for the support of the state government.

The Cancer Genome Atlas Grant is a five-year award.