Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (COSMIC)

A trusted resource to better understand somatic cancer mutations

COSMIC, the world's largest, expert-curated somatic mutation database

COSMIC, the Catalogue Of Somatic Mutations In Cancer, is the world’s largest and most comprehensive resource for exploring the impact of somatic mutations in human cancer. Containing nearly 24 million genomic variants across nearly 6,800 precise forms of human cancer, COSMIC provides variant scientists and bioinformaticians with an expert-curated database to:

  • Prioritize clinically relevant variants
  • Annotate variants with actionability
  • Rapidly assess somatic frequency
  • Precisely map genomic coordinates
  • Contextualize reports with COSMIC IDs

Explore how somatic mutations affect human cancers

1000
Active users worldwide
0 million
Unique somatic mutations included in the COSMIC Knowledgebase
1000
COSMIC citations from high impact scientific publications
On-demand webinar

Predict and avoid mutational consequences of cancer therapies with COSMIC

Learn how to use COSMIC to avoid mutational consequences in cancer drug development and  profile the mutational signatures of cancer therapies in clinical samples with Dr. Kyle Nilson. The session is followed by a Q&A session with COSMIC curator Steven Jupe.

Watch now

Features

COSMIC Actionability

What treatment options are available or under investigation for your cancer patients?

Get the answers with COSMIC Actionability, which has the latest data on the availability and development of drugs targeting specific somatic mutations in cancer, including lung, breast, melanoma, ovarian and colon cancer.

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High precision manual curation

COSMIC was created with high-precision manual curation methods by PhD-level experts. 

  1. Track 1: Manual curators extract detailed mutation, environmental factor, patient predisposition and other data from the scientific literature
  2. Track 2: Curators access a wealth of focused data from systematic screens via major cancer data portals and supplemental files from curated papers.
Always growing

COSMIC is updated quarterly to ensure you remain informed on the latest findings.

Over the last five releases:

  • The number of genomic mutations has increased by over 17%.
  • Over 3.4 million new mutations, 93,000 new samples and 1700 new articles were added
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Genome-wide annotations

Access meticulously curated data on key cancer genes, merged with genome-wide annotations from 45,178 publications and open-access data from TCGA and ICGC.

  • Genome wide annotation, with 24 million genomic variants across 6800 precise cancer types
  • Encompasses every human gene, describing 5.4 million coding mutations across 1.5 million samples
View database statistics
Transparent citations

Every data point is:

  • Traceable to the source
  • Processed with documentation
  • Under the user's full control
Easy searching

COSMIC is designed to provide ease-of-use and maximum flexibility. Users have full control of how they search, visualize and manipulate the data for specific panels and/or pipelines.

Applications

Clinical NGS testing

Learn how COSMIC and the Human Somatic Mutation Database (HSMD) provide clinical NGS testing labs with trusted data to identify and annotate biomarkers, assess their biological and clinical relevance, and support clinical trial matching and molecular tumor board (MTB) recommendations.

Learn more

Biopharmaceutical research

Learn how COSMIC and HSMD enable biopharmaceutical researchers to avoid pitfalls in early cancer drug discovery, confidently qualify candidate drug targets, and accelerate indication expansion and repurposing of existing cancer therapies.
Read more

Use cases

How to search by gene, cancer type, and mutation Here, we show you how to search COSMIC for a gene, cancer type, and mutation using BRAF as an example.

COSMIC Main Page

To browse COSMIC you can simply navigate to the main page and search for a gene, cancer type, mutation, etc in the search box. To illustrate we will explore the results for a single gene. Type BRAF in the search interface and hit enter.

Search Results

If you select the BRAF result, COSMIC returns a detailed page that provides: gene summaries, links to other COSMIC resources (e.g., Census genes, Hallmark genes, etc), external links, drug resistance, tissue distribution, genome browser view, mutation distribution, variants, and references.

BRAF Overview

First, let’s look at the Overview section. Along the top of this section there are several useful icons. The ‘Census gene’ icon tells us that BRAF is a known cancer gene according to the Gene Census (see below). The next three icons tell us that it is also an ‘Expert curated gene’, that mouse insertional mutagenesis experiments support that BRAF is a cancer gene, and finally that BRAF is a ‘Cancer Hallmark’ gene. After these icons are many more details about BRAF including coordinates, synonyms, link to COSMIC-3D (see below), and more.

Gene View

Next, let’s examine the Gene view. The histogram of mutation (substitution) frequency shows a very dramatic “hotspot” of mutations at position 600 (e.g., p.V600E). Mouse over this part of the histogram to see details. This is a very well-known driver mutation in multiple types of cancer.

Tissue Distribution

Finally, navigate to the ‘Tissue distribution’ section. Sort the table by ‘Point mutations’ -> ‘% Mutated’. Notice that cancers of the thyroid and skin (e.g., melanoma) are by far the most consistently mutated at the BRAF gene locus (note NS means not specified). A subset of samples also display copy number variation (CNV) gains and up-regulated expression. In general certain predominanly mutated genes tend to be associated with cancers of certain origins. However, there are many exceptions to this statement and some genes (e.g., TP53) are widely mutated in many different cancer types.

COSMIC Main Page
Search Results
BRAF Overview
Gene View
Tissue Distribution

The world's largest, expert-curated somatic mutation database

+24M
Total Genomic Variants
+1.5M
Total Human Samples
+29,000
Expert-curated Papers
+50,000
Users Worldwide

Want to try COSMIC in your lab?

Request a demo with our experts to learn how you can try COSMIC for free in your lab. Not ready for a demo? Fill out the form and we will send you free resources to learn more.

Events & Webinars

How to use COSMIC to identify variants of interest for cancer research

The accurate identification and annotation of somatic variants rely on the accuracy and depth of reference databases. In this on-demand webinar, learn how to use COSMIC to annotate gene variants using the world’s most comprehensive resource of up-to-date scientific evidence to find biological connections in somatic variants with manually curated findings.

Sample to Insight
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