Scientific aims of the Consortium

The main aims of the bladder cancer consortium are:

• Create a forum for discussion of key challenges in understanding the molecular epidemiology of bladder cancer.
• Provide a mechanism to rapidly replicate previously reported associations.
• Facilitate the pooling of comparable data on environmental and genetic risk factors across studies in order to overcome the limited power of individual studies.
• Consider new ideas and initiate new large-scale efforts.

Possible areas of collaboration include the evaluation of complex multigenic effects, interactions with cigarette smoking and other exposures, evaluation of gender-specific effects, evaluation of heterogeneity of genetic effects by tumour subgroups, and evaluation of prognostic factors when case follow-up data is available.

Criteria of eligibility to join the consortium

• Studies of bladder cancer in the general population.
• Questionnaire information on risk factors for bladder cancer.
• Minimum of 100 cases and 100 controls with DNA samples.

Organizational structure

• Coordinating committee:
  The Coordinating Committee will coordinate the Consortium activities with the goal to facilitate the creation of working groups for specific projects. The Coordinating Committee will rotate every two years.
• Working groups for specific projects:
  Small working groups will be formed to carry out specific projects. Members of the working groups will be investigators actively working and coordinating the project. Priority will be given to investigators who contribute data to the project. The working group could solicit or consider requests from people to participate on a specific project, even if they do not contribute data, if they make additional contributions, e. g.:
  • Investigators with a special expertise beyond what the working group already has, e.g. a new statistical approach.
  • Investigators who propose a new analysis they want to lead (including junior people or trainees).
  • Investigators from ongoing studies participating in the consortium that don't yet have data but would like to get involved in a specific area in the future.

Initiation of proposals by working groups

Proposals for projects will be submitted by the working groups to the Coordinating Committee. After consideration by the Coordinating Committee aimed at facilitating and possibly improving the proposals, projects will be distributed to the Consortium members. At that point, working groups will solicit data contributions by individual studies interested in participating in the proposed project.