ICGC ARGO Data
ARGO Data Update — Release 15
9 programs, 7,056 donors, 179,956 files. ARGO molecular data is linked to donor treatment and outcome data, including diagnosis, treatment history and survival. Controlled data is available after DACO approval.
Find out more Data Access
ICGC has released data across three successive initiatives, each expanding on the last. What's available and how you access it depends on which generation you need.
ICGC 25K Project
The original ICGC initiative set out to define the genomes of 25,000 primary, untreated cancers. The dataset spanned 86 cancer projects, 22 cancer primary sites, 24,289 donors of which 22,330 had molecular data, and 81,782,588 simple somatic mutations. It remains one of the most comprehensive maps of cancer genomic structure ever assembled.
PCAWG (Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes)
The second ICGC initiative, PCAWG examined more than 2,600 cancer whole genomes to identify common patterns of mutation across both coding and non-coding regions.
ICGC ARGO
The current phase of the consortium. ARGO is uniformly analysing specimens from 100,000 cancer patients with high quality clinical data, released on a rolling basis through the ARGO Data Platform.
Read more about the initiatives
How to Access
ICGC Release Data contains both open and controlled access data. Controlled access data is only available to authorized DACO-approved users.
25K and PCAWG data was hosted on the ICGC Data Portal. The original ICGC Data Portal was retired in June 2024. Although the interactive data portal was shut down, the final release data, as well as the PCAWG project data from the project remain available.
See details here for how to access these data.
ARGO data is available through the ARGO Data Platform. The ARGO Data Platform lets you browse and explore donor information through clinical and file filters. The platform holds both clinical and molecular data, standardised to the same format across every contributing program. Clinical data covers each donor's diagnosis, treatment and outcomes, alongside molecular data that has been uniformly analysed against the GRCh38 Human Reference Genome. ICGC ARGO clinical and molecular data can be accessed after obtaining DACO approval.
ICGC ARGO Data Platform
Applying for Approval
The Data Access Compliance Office (DACO) is the body created to manage access to ICGC’s controlled data. Researchers submit their access requests directly to the DACO, who in turn reviews these applications to verify the conformity of users' projects with the goals and policies of ICGC, including, but not limited to, policies concerning the purpose and relevance of the research, the protection of participants, and the security of participants' data.
About DACOApply for Access
Further Reading
- Zhang J, Baran J, Cros A, Guberman JM, Haider S, Hsu J, et al. International Cancer Genome Consortium Data Portal--a one-stop shop for cancer genomics data. Database (Oxford). 2011;2011:bar026. doi:10.1093/database/bar026
- Nahal-Bose HK, Lichter P, Weber U, Stein LD, Bajari R, Xiang L, et al. The ICGC ARGO data dictionary for standardizing global cancer clinical data. Sci Data. 2025;12(1):1852. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-06068-4
- Shiell M, Bajari R, Andric D, Eubank J, Chan BF, Richardsson AJ, et al. Overture: an open-source genomics data platform. GigaScience. 2025;14:giaf038. https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giaf038