COSMIC
About the resource
COSMIC — the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer — is the Sanger Institute's flagship cancer-genomics database. Its core mutation set is hand-curated from tens of thousands of published cancer papers and from large studies including TCGA, ICGC and the Sanger Institute Cancer Genome Project, with quarterly releases.
Around it sit several integrated resources: the Cancer Gene Census (the canonical list of genes causally implicated in cancer with mode of action and mutation type), Mutational Signatures (the SBS, DBS and indel reference signatures derived in 2013 and updated since), the Cancer Mutation Census (population-style aggregation of variants), Resistance Mutations and Actionability. Free for academic use; commercial use is licensed.
What you'd use it for
- 01Look up the somatic-mutation landscape of a cancer gene
- 02Use the Cancer Gene Census as a canonical oncogene/TSG reference
- 03Run mutational-signature analysis with the COSMIC reference set
- 04Find resistance mutations associated with a targeted therapy
How you access it
Recent updates
- 28 Apr 2026v100 release with refined mutational-signature reference set and updated Cancer Gene Census.