News

List of most recent updates

Rolf H Sijmons, 2009-04-07

Hereditary Leiomyomatosis and Renal Cell Cancer (February 2); Giant Diencephalic Hamartoma and Associated Anomalies (NEW, January 25); Hepatocellular Cancer, Familial Clustering of (January 15); MEN2A, FMTC and Li-Fraumeni syndrome (January 14); VATER association (NEW), Marshall-Smith syndrome (NEW), Wilms' Tumor and Neuroblastoma, Familial (NEW) (January 13); Peutz-Jeghers syndrome (December 22); Saethre-Chotzen syndrome and Lynch syndrome (November 6)

Welcome to the website of the Familial Cancer Database (www.facd.info)

Cancer is associated with a wide range of hereditary disorders. Recognizing these disorders in cancer patients is important for the medical management of both patients and their relatives. Conversely, recognizing the fact that cancer may develop as a complication of a particular hereditary disorder which has already been diagnosed, is important for the same reason.

The Familial Cancer Database (FaCD)

The goal of FaCD is to assist clinicians and genetic counselors in making a genetic differential diagnosis in cancer patients, as well as in becoming aware of the tumor spectrum associated with hereditary disorders that have already been diagnosed in their patients. FaCD is not an expert system, but a tool for experts. It is not a substitute for consulting an expert on the clinical genetics of cancer.
The content of the database is written by the editor and, for particular files, expert co-authors. Experts who want to contribute to particular syndrome files are invited to contact the editor; these authors will be listed in the syndrome files they contributed to. We will actively approach colleagues with the request to help us with the editorial process. This is not just to try to share the workload but also for reasons of quality control as we all are likely to have have our 'blind spots' and personal preferences when distilling facts from the literature.
Content is updated on a regular basis. Each of the database files displays the date of the most recent textual changes.

FaCD has been developed at the Department of Genetics of the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), The Netherlands. It is a non-commercial project and is financially supported by the UMCG department of Genetics.This website does not accept or host any advertisement. FaCD-online was officially launched June 5th 2008 at the 3d Familial Cancer Conference, Madrid, Spain.

How does FaCD work?

The software tries to match tumor and non-tumor features observed in patients and their families with any of the more than 400 disorders presently contained in the database and provides a synopsis for each of these disorders, including links to OMIM and other relevant web sites. This synopsis focuses on phenotype and cancer risk estimates; it does not discuss surveillance and does not list low-penetrant mutations/variants. The following classes of disorders have been included in this database:

Hereditary disorders certainly or possibly associated with increased cancer risk
Familial clustering of particular types of cancer e.c.i.
Known patterns of multiple primary tumors
Common disorders and external risk factors associated with increased cancer risk (e.g. diabetes, alcohol) . These disorders have been added because they can present as familial cases and carry their own cancer risk.

A document with suggestions on how to search the database and interpret its results is available in the "Find Syndromes" screen under the "How to search for syndromes"-button. We advise users to read it.

Who gets access to FaCD?

FaCD is intended for use by health professionals with at least basic knowledge of clinical cancer genetics. FaCD is offered free of charge to these health professionals and to researchers who may want to study the database for scientific purposes. They can request a username and password for database access by following the link "Request Username" in the menu on the left. Please let us know if you need support with the registration and account activation process.

Privacy policy
Visitors IP addresses and personal data collected through the access request form or through emails sent to FaCD by users will not be distributed to other parties. Non-personal data like for example type of profession and country of origin of users may be used for scientific analysis of the FaCD user group. This website does not use cookies unless the user selects the 'remember me' option, in which case a cookie will be sent to simplify the log-in procedure.

(date last modified: February 2, 2010)