The NCI Consortium of Cohorts may have the greatest research potential, with 23 population cohorts now involving one and a half million subjects at the present time. Developing this initiative was no easy task, and special credit goes to Bob Hoover for his vision and his tenacity as the primary architect of the consortium which voluntarily brings together separately funded investigators in diverse study populations on an international scale. Each cohort has extensive risk factor data, biospecimens including germline DNA collected at baseline, and thousands of cancer cases. The cohorts include those mentioned here, the American Cancer Society, EPIC in Europe, Multi-Ethnic Cohort in Hawaii and Los Angeles, The Nurses Health Study and, of course PLCO, the study that’s being carried out in collaboration with our division and the division of Cancer Prevention. Within the cohorts’ case, nested case-control studies of specific cancers are conducted to identify the etiologic factors and pathways, including molecular and biochemical markers of susceptibility, environmental exposures, and outcomes including precursor states and early-stage tumors. So this could be a goldmine for studies of proteomics. Since multiple phenotypes can be evaluated in cohort studies, it’s possible to detect common or converging pathways that may underlie several forms of cancer and possibly other chronic diseases.This schematic shows some of the well-known cohorts participating in the consortium. Questionnaires provide risk factor data, while the biospecimens provide biomarker data on genetic susceptibility through candidate gene searches and whole genome scans, and on metabolomics and proteomics.