Up For A Challenge (U4C) – Stimulating Innovation in Breast Cancer Genetic Epidemiology

Breast cancer remains a major public health problem, with more than 250,000 new cases and 40,000 deaths estimated to occur in women in the U.S. in 2017. In 2015, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) launched this challenge to inspire novel cross-disciplinary approaches to more fully decipher the genomic basis of breast cancer. The results from U4C demonstrate the utility of a prize competition to encourage innovation in breast cancer genetic epidemiology and ultimately into the biology of breast cancer and beyond. The NCI announced the winners in October 2016, and articles from four of the top-ranking projects appear in this special collection, published by PLOS Genetics.

Image Credit: Image courtesy of the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute