The recent launch of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) looks set to flood DNA databases with unprecedented genomic detail on up to 50 types of cancer. The initiative—a collaboration of more than a dozen major research organizations around the globe—will generate a “comprehensive description of genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic changes in 50 different tumor types and/or subtypes.” Each member is expected to take on one or more cancers from a list agreed by the ICGC who will coordinate the program. Each project will involve sourcing and sequencing both tumor and non-tumor tissue from some 500 patients at an estimated cost of around $20 million. Participants are expected to find their own funding and, to maximize the public benefit, will not file any patent applications. Instead, the data will be made available to selected investigators. Some question whether this money—the total cost is $1 billion—is well spent. Only in part, says Stephen Elledge of the Center for Genetics and Genomics at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “If the goal is to cure cancer and not just to describe it, there needs to be more money for functional genomics rather than just sequencing,” he says. The consortium, which includes institutes from Canada, China, France, India, Japan, Singapore, the UK and the US, is about to begin the process of selecting which cancers will make it onto the sequencing shortlist.