The Work We Fund

Funded projects
1,250+
Men's Health Partners
20
Countries
20
We work closely with our global men's health partners to ensure collaboration, transparency and accountability for every project we fund. We monitor this through report cards which detail what we seek to achieve, key measures and the impact.
Prostate Cancer
"Together with the brightest minds in research, we aim to achieve significant breakthroughs in the hope of beating prostate cancer. Our disruptive funding approach identifies revolutionary ways to accelerate health outcomes by creating strong, global collaborative teams." Dr. Colleen Nelson, Global Scientific Chair.
Men's Health
"One Mo can help change the face of men’s health through the powerful conversations created globally during Movember. Men have the chance to confidently discuss men’s health with people around them, resulting in men taking action early, helping change and save lives." Paul Villanti, Executive Director, Programmes
Mental health and suicide prevention
“The number of men taking their own lives around the world is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Movember is working to ensure all men and boys look after their mental health and are comfortable to seek help when they’re struggling.”
Brendan Maher, Global Director, Mental Health and Suicide Prevention.
Testicular Cancer
“Despite being the 2nd most common cancer in young men, testicular cancer is often a forgotten cancer due to early detection and treatment. Our projects look at underinvested areas such as improving access to healthcare services and treatment options for relapse” Paul Villanti, Executive Director, Programmes.

Identifying Genes That Cause Testicular Cancer

Movember Funding to Date

GBP 1,050,000

What we seek to achieve

By using advanced genetic technologies including Next Generation Sequencing and Array SNP Genotyping, the aim of the project is to discover and better understand genetic factors which are linked to the development of testicular cancer.

Country
United Kingdom
Implemented by
The Institute of Cancer Research
Project start date
April 2013
Project Status
Project Completed

About the project

This research is being undertaken by Dr Clare Turnbull and her team at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), UK.

At ICR the testicular cancer research team have assembled blood samples and tumour samples from a significant series of men with testicular cancer. This is the largest collection of samples from men with testicular cancer in the world.

The team are using several advanced genetic technologies to study the genetic sequence of these men. These include “Next Generation Sequencing” and “Array SNP genotyping”. Next Generation Sequencing of the “exome” involves studying the full code of all genes. This totals about 20,000 genes, which equates to approximately 30 million bases of DNA. However, the genes only account for less than 2% of the human genome, and it is known that the remaining 98% is important but it is not yet well understood. Array SNP genotyping is another approach to studying the genetic code and enables us to study at scale genetic variants outside of the genes. Array SNP genotyping involves analysing hundreds of thousands of selected genetic variants (SNPs) which have been assembled onto a “SNP array”.  

The research team use the data they generate to compare patterns of genetic variants:
(i) between men with and without testicular cancer
(ii) across families with multiple cases of testicular cancer 
(iii) between the blood and the tumour of men with testicular cancer.

The research team will analyse the combined data to identify the specific genetic variants linked with development of testicular cancer. In all cases, large experiments are needed to distinguish ‘signal’ from ‘noise’, that is to identify the biologically important genetic changes from all of the innocent ‘spelling variations’ in the genes.

Complex analyses of these data integrated with other biological data (bioinformatics), studies of the patterns of disease within families and populations (genetic epidemiology) and mathematical modelling best enable us to understand the relevance of the genetic signals we see in our experiments.

There are two main reasons why identification of the genetic variants that underlie the development of testicular cancer is important:
(i) to enable development of genetic tests to better understand which men are at high risk of developing testicular cancer and/or, once a man develops testicular cancer, to better predict the behaviour of tumours 
(ii) to enable better biological understanding of how and why the disease develops, which may in turn facilitate better and more targeted treatment.

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