AMDeC

PROJECT HISTORY

AMDeC’s New York Cancer Project (NYCP) is a study of 18,000 New York City residents that allows researchers to better understand how factors such as environment, life style, diet, family health history, and genetics affect the development of cancer and an array of other life threatening diseases.  The NYCP is visionary in that it was designed to address the study of cancer and other major public health diseases through one of the world’s largest non-disease related cohorts of diverse ethnic and racial populations living in a single metropolitan area.  

UNIQUE DATA COLLECTION

With the enthusiastic participation of New York City's vibrant ethnic communities, AMDeC has collected extensive medical and lifestyle information as well as blood samples for genetic analysis on the 18,000 participants that enrolled in the study.  Blood samples from each of the 18,000 plus participants were collected and high quality gDNA extracted and is stored under the direction of Drs. Andrew Brooks and Jay Tischfield at The Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository.

The valuable clinical and demographic information that has been collected from each participant during his or her enrollment interview, as well as follow-up participant health status data, is housed at the Columbia University Bioinformatics Center, under the guidance of Dr. Wendy Chung.  Theongoing tracking of participants’ health status to further enhance the value of the project’s dataset is of great importance to the NYCP.  As such, Year 1 and Year 5 post-enrollment follow-up surveys have been collected to determine the current health status of study participants and AMDeC will continue to conduct long-term follow-up with the study cohort.

IMPROVING THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE

These invaluable collections of genotypic and phenotypic data are available to scientists nationwide seeking to examine various diseases’ genetic and epidemiologic etiology. Both environmental factors and genetics affect the development of cancer and other life threatening diseases in different ethnic groups, and this understanding will lead to significantly improved diagnostic tools and treatments.

Already, numerous genetic discoveries and subsequent scientific publications have been generated on a variety of diseases, such as breast cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, and obesity, using the DNA of this cohort as controls.  Discoveries such as these provide the basis for future diagnostics, therapies, and cures.

ACCESS TO NYCP SAMPLES AND DATA

To request an application to access to the NYCP data or purchase samples from the NYCP biorepository, please contact Taylor Palumbo at (212) 218- 5640.  Also, see the NYCP Fact Sheet PDF for download at the link below.