DISCERN project: IARC and partners search for unknown causes of renal, pancreatic, and colorectal cancers

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and partners across Europe have begun an ambitious new project that will incorporate large-scale cancer biorepositories and novel exposomics techniques to understand the causes of renal, pancreatic, and colorectal cancer in Europe. The project, Discovering the Causes of Three Poorly Understood Cancers in Europe (DISCERN), also aims to help explain the geographical distribution of these cancer types, including their high incidence in central and eastern Europe. The project is funded by a grant from the European Commission in the framework of the Horizon Europe Mission on Cancer.

The DISCERN project will combine data from large-scale European biorepositories comprising population-based cohorts and tumour case series for each of the three cancer types. It will integrate state-of-the-art exposomics and proteomics techniques, as well as genomics technologies, to analyse both normal tissue and tumour tissue. The goal of DISCERN is to uncover novel causes for each of these three cancer types and to provide the critical evidence base required to develop new prevention strategies for these cancers in Europe.

The DISCERN kick-off meeting was held virtually on 12 January 2023, and the participants will meet in person in May 2023 in Barcelona, Spain.

The partners in the DISCERN project are IARC, Utrecht University (The Netherlands), Masaryk University (Czechia), the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona, Spain), Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement (INRAE, France), Leiden University (The Netherlands), the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (Sweden), the University of Tartu (Estonia), the International Kidney Cancer Coalition (IKCC), Digestive Cancers Europe (DiCE), the University of Turin (Italy), the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO, Spain), Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL, Spain), Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine (NIOM, Poland), Maria Skłodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology (MSCNRIO, Poland), Neuromed Mediterranean Neurological Institute (Italy), UiT The Arctic University of Norway (Norway), Pancreatic Cancer Europe (PCE), Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine (United Kingdom), and the University of Oxford (UOXF, United Kingdom).

For further information about DISCERN, please contact discern@iarc.who.int.