COSMIC, the Catalogue Of Somatic Mutations In Cancer ( https://cancer.sanger.ac.uk ) is the most detailed and comprehensive resource for exploring the effect of somatic mutations in human cancer. The latest release, COSMIC v86 (August 2018), includes almost 6 million coding mutations across 1.4 million tumour samples, curated from over 26 000 publications. In addition to coding mutations, COSMIC covers all the genetic mechanisms by which somatic mutations promote cancer, including non-coding mutations, gene fusions, copy-number variants and drug-resistance mutations. COSMIC is primarily hand-curated, ensuring quality, accuracy and descriptive data capture. Building on our manual curation processes, we are introducing new initiatives that allow us to prioritize key genes and diseases, and to react more quickly and comprehensively to new findings in the literature. Alongside improvements to the public website and data-download systems, new functionality in COSMIC-3D allows exploration of mutations within three-dimensional protein structures, their protein structural and functional impacts, and implications for druggability. In parallel with COSMIC’s deep and broad variant coverage, the Cancer Gene Census (CGC) describes a curated catalogue of genes driving every form of human cancer. Currently describing 719 genes, the CGC has recently introduced functional descriptions of how each gene drives disease, summarized into the 10 cancer Hallmarks.

COSMIC, the Catalogue Of Somatic Mutations In Cancer (http://cancer.sanger.ac.uk) is the world's largest and most comprehensive resource for exploring the impact of somatic mutations in human cancer. Our latest release (v70; Aug 2014) describes 2 002 811 coding point mutations in over one million tumor samples and across most human genes. To emphasize depth of knowledge on known cancer genes, mutation information is curated manually from the scientific literature, allowing very precise definitions of disease types and patient details. Combination of almost 20 000 published studies gives substantial resolution of how mutations and phenotypes relate in human cancer, providing insights into the stratification of mutations and biomarkers across cancer patient populations. Conversely, our curation of cancer genomes (over 12 000) emphasizes knowledge breadth, driving discovery of unrecognized cancer-driving hotspots and molecular targets. Our high-resolution curation approach is globally unique, giving substantial insight into molecular biomarkers in human oncology. In addition, COSMIC also details more than six million noncoding mutations, 10 534 gene fusions, 61 299 genome rearrangements, 695 504 abnormal copy number segments and 60 119 787 abnormal expression variants. All these types of somatic mutation are annotated to both the human genome and each affected coding gene, then correlated across disease and mutation types.

COSMIC (http://www.sanger.ac.uk/cosmic) curates comprehensive information on somatic mutations in human cancer. Release v48 (July 2010) describes over 136 000 coding mutations in almost 542 000 tumour samples; of the 18 490 genes documented, 4803 (26%) have one or more mutations. Full scientific literature curations are available on 83 major cancer genes and 49 fusion gene pairs (19 new cancer genes and 30 new fusion pairs this year) and this number is continually increasing. Key amongst these is TP53, now available through a collaboration with the IARC p53 database. In addition to data from the Cancer Genome Project (CGP) at the Sanger Institute, UK, and The Cancer Genome Atlas project (TCGA), large systematic screens are also now curated. Major website upgrades now make these data much more mineable, with many new selection filters and graphics. A Biomart is now available allowing more automated data mining and integration with other biological databases. Annotation of genomic features has become a significant focus; COSMIC has begun curating full-genome resequencing experiments, developing new web pages, export formats and graphics styles. With all genomic information recently updated to GRCh37, COSMIC integrates many diverse types of mutation information and is making much closer links with Ensembl and other data resources.

COSMIC, the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (http://cancer.sanger.ac.uk) is a high-resolution resource for exploring targets and trends in the genetics of human cancer. Currently the broadest database of mutations in cancer, the information in COSMIC is curated by expert scientists, primarily by scrutinizing large numbers of scientific publications. Over 4 million coding mutations are described in v78 (September 2016), combining genome-wide sequencing results from 28 366 tumours with complete manual curation of 23 489 individual publications focused on 186 key genes and 286 key fusion pairs across all cancers. Molecular profiling of large tumour numbers has also allowed the annotation of more than 13 million non-coding mutations, 18 029 gene fusions, 187 429 genome rearrangements, 1 271 436 abnormal copy number segments, 9 175 462 abnormal expression variants and 7 879 142 differentially methylated CpG dinucleotides. COSMIC now details the genetics of drug resistance, novel somatic gene mutations which allow a tumour to evade therapeutic cancer drugs. Focusing initially on highly characterized drugs and genes, COSMIC v78 contains wide resistance mutation profiles across 20 drugs, detailing the recurrence of 301 unique resistance alleles across 1934 drug-resistant tumours. All information from the COSMIC database is available freely on the COSMIC website.

The Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (COSMIC) Cancer Gene Census (CGC) is an expert-curated description of the genes driving human cancer, used as a standard in cancer genetics across basic research, medical reporting and pharmaceutical development. After a major expansion and complete re-evaluation, the 2018 CGC describes in detail the effect of 719 cancer-driving genes. Recent expansion includes functional and mechanistic descriptions of how each gene contributes to disease generation, described in terms of the key cancer hallmarks and the impact of mutations on gene and protein function. These functional characteristics depict the extraordinary complexity of cancer biology, and suggest multiple cancer-related functions for many genes, which are often highly tissue- or tumour stage-dependent. The 2018 CGC encompasses a second-tier, describing an expanding list of genes (currently 145) from more recent cancer studies which show supportive but less detailed indications of a role in cancer.

The discovery of mutations in cancer genes has advanced our understanding of cancer. These results are dispersed across the scientific literature and with the availability of the human genome sequence will continue to accrue. The COSMIC (Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer) database and website have been developed to store somatic mutation data in a single location and display the data and other information related to human cancer. To populate this resource, data has currently been extracted from reports in the scientific literature for somatic mutations in four genes, BRAF, HRAS, KRAS2 and NRAS. At present, the database holds information on 66 634 samples and reports a total of 10 647 mutations. Through the web pages, these data can be queried, displayed as figures or tables and exported in a number of formats. COSMIC is an ongoing project that will continue to curate somatic mutation data and release it through the website.

COSMIC is currently the most comprehensive global resource for information on somatic mutations in human cancer, combining curation of the scientific literature with tumor resequencing data from the Cancer Genome Project at the Sanger Institute, U.K. Almost 4800 genes and 250000 tumors have been examined, resulting in over 50000 mutations available for investigation. This information can be accessed in a number of ways, the most convenient being the Web-based system which allows detailed data mining, presenting the results in easily interpretable formats. This unit describes the graphical system in detail, elaborating an example walkthrough and the many ways that the resulting information can be thoroughly investigated by combining data, respecializing the query, or viewing the results in different ways. Alternate protocols overview the available precompiled data files available for download.

The catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (COSMIC) (http://www.sanger.ac.uk/cosmic/) is the largest public resource for information on somatically acquired mutations in human cancer and is available freely without restrictions. Currently (v43, August 2009), COSMIC contains details of 1.5-million experiments performed through 13 423 genes in almost 370 000 tumours, describing over 90 000 individual mutations. Data are gathered from two sources, publications in the scientific literature, (v43 contains 7797 curated articles) and the full output of the genome-wide screens from the Cancer Genome Project (CGP) at the Sanger Institute, UK. Most of the world’s literature on point mutations in human cancer has now been curated into COSMIC and while this is continually updated, a greater emphasis on curating fusion gene mutations is driving the expansion of this information; over 2700 fusion gene mutations are now described. Whole-genome sequencing screens are now identifying large numbers of genomic rearrangements in cancer and COSMIC is now displaying details of these analyses also. Examination of COSMIC’s data is primarily web-driven, focused on providing mutation range and frequency statistics based upon a choice of gene and/or cancer phenotype. Graphical views provide easily interpretable summaries of large quantities of data, and export functions can provide precise details of user-selected data.