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National Cancer Institute
U.S. National Institutes of Health www.cancer.gov
 

caBIG® and India

“In order to fight cancer, we must do so on a global level. Only through international collaborative research can we succeed.” – George Komatsoulis, Ph.D., NCI Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology

Background

India's Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is at the forefront of the information technology revolution in India and is devoted to building and identifying emerging and enabling technologies that provide solutions for economic and human advancement. CDAC is a global leader in the areas of high performance computing, multi-lingual computing and health informatics.

About the Partnership

CDAC and caBIG® are working to enable collaborations between the U.S. and India by creating the Indo-US Cancer Research Grid (IUCRG). Using caGrid technology, the IUCRG will provide researchers and clinicians in both countries access to pertinent information about clinical research, imaging, molecular biology, and pathology. Discussions are also ongoing with other medical research organizations in India, including the Tata Memorial Hospital system, and a number of projects are in the planning or early execution phases including:

  • Accessing protein sequences from the Protein Information Resources (through the GridPIR caGrid resource) and transferring them to CDAC for protein folding analysis (using caGrid workflow, transport and security technology)
  • Implementing several caBIG® applications under Software as a Service (SaaS) model, beginning with caTissue
  • Integrating caBIG® applications into the Tata Medical Centre (Kolkata) hospital management and information system currently under development by Tata Consultancy Services.
  • Building a regional biobanking system—based on caTissue—at the Tata Memorial Centre & Hospital in Mumbai

Activities and Milestones

In 2010, caBIG® participated in the U.S.-India Network-enabled Research Collaboration Workshop in New Delhi, India. This workshop—the second such meeting between C-DAC and caBIG®—brought together academic, service, and industry sectors of healthcare and provided the opportunity for technology infrastructure providers and users from many disciplines to exchange information about their respective research interests.

Leading cancer centers in India, including Tata Medical Centre in Kolkata and Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Center in Bangalore, have selected and are in the process of implementing caTissue for their biobanking applications.