At ASCO, Vice President Joe Biden announced the launch of the first-of-its-kind, open-access cancer databases to allow researchers to better understand the disease and develop more effective treatments.
The Genomic Data Commons (GDC), part of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) contains the raw genomic and clinical data for 12,000 patients, with more records to come as more and more scientists contribute, providing a unique sharing opportunity meant to accelerate progress. Data in the GDC, representing thousands of cancer patients and tumors, will be harmonized so that they are accessible and broadly useful to any cancer researcher, including ACGT Young and Clinical Investigators.
“Of particular significance, the GDC will also house data from a number of newer NCI programs that will sequence the DNA of patients enrolled in NCI clinical trials,” said Louis M. Staudt, M.D., Ph.D., NCI. “These datasets will lead to a much deeper understanding of which therapies are most effective for individual cancer patients. With each new addition, the GDC will evolve into a smarter, more comprehensive knowledge system that will foster important discoveries in cancer research and increase the success of cancer treatment for patients.”
The hope is that the GDC will form the basis for a comprehensive knowledge system for cancer. GDC researchers will be able to integrate genetic and clinical data with information on the molecular profiles of tumors as well as treatment response. From this perspective, the GDC would become an important resource for generating potentially actionable and life-changing information that ultimately could be used by doctors and their patients.
Video from Reuters via Washington Post