U.S. gov't launches open-access database to support cancer "moonshot"

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Monday launched a first-of-its-kind, open-access cancer database as part of his moonshot initiative against the disease.

The Genomic Data Commons (GNC), an initiative of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, will provide a public data platform for storing, analyzing, and sharing genomic and associated clinical data on cancer, the White House said in a statement.

The GDC initially contained raw genomic and clinical data for 12,000 patients but will accommodate cancer genomic sets that cancer researchers from around the world wish to share in the future.

"This is good news in the fight against cancer. With the launch of this new national resource, anyone can freely access raw genomic and clinical data for 12,000 patients -- with more records to follow," Biden said in the statement.

"Increasing the pool of researchers who can access data and decreasing the time it takes for them to review and find new patterns in that data is critical to speeding up development of lifesaving treatments for patients," he said.

The database will be interactive, easily searchable and provide raw, unprocessed genomic data that will allow researchers to reanalyze the information as new computational tools and analytical methods are developed.

The launch "marks progress" on both the Cancer Moonshot and President Barack Obama's Precision Medicine Initiative, which are aimed at enabling individualized care through effective prevention, diagnosis and therapies, the White House statement said.

The project was launched during Biden's visit to the University of Chicago, which will manage the new database in collaboration with the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research for the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Enditem