Director's Note
My colleagues and I just returned from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in Denver, where we were able to reflect on our accomplishments as a community and consider the challenges ahead.
We are all keenly aware of the economic challenges facing this country, but I hope that we are also mindful of the extraordinary scientific opportunities before us today. At AACR, I was again given perspective on what we have achieved and what we aspire to accomplish by working together. As I listened to the remarks provided by Dr. John E. Niederhuber, Dr. Anna Barker and other colleagues, I was reminded not only of our shared mission but of our mission to share.
Dr. Barker began her remarks during a session on The Cancer Genome Atlas by encouraging us to think about this extraordinary time as a time of transition—a time where the scientific questions facing us today are too great for one person or one lab, a time in which all of those within the cancer community will be called upon to move from a mindset of individual investigator to one of collaborative community. Certainly, this is the time for caBIG®.
Programs such as TCGA and others are generating mountains of data revealing potential genetic indicators of cancer. Dr. Niederhuber reminded us that this information, "while scientifically fascinating and intellectually groundbreaking, remains raw data that must be developed into knowledge of causal pathways and functional biology." Dr. Barker echoed his sentiment by saying that "it's a long way from knowing genomic characteristics to knowing what drives biology." She also reminded us that understanding functional pathways and determining how to manipulate those pathways will require that we work together in new ways. Projects like the TCGA require an analytical pipeline that can ensure close to real-time interpretation of results while allowing data integration and sharing. That type of collaboration is only made possible through enhanced bioinformatics tools and resources.
Those within the caBIG® network realize that our vision extends beyond mere data gathering and sharing—for us the horizon is true connectivity. You may have heard me in recent months talk about the "Cancer Knowledge Cloud" that we are making possible through caBIG®. In the Cancer Knowledge Cloud, all the stakeholders in research and medicine are giving and taking information to optimize discovery and clinical decision-making. In this knowledge ecosystem, information is accessible from those who have biological and clinical data. As the accessible content becomes richer, information can be joined and then applied to research and clinical care questions. The Cloud addresses consumer needs as well. It's their clinical and genomic data that are being up- and down-loaded, and through personal health records they can connect to control their health more directly. The Cancer Knowledge Cloud is an environment where all this information is available, accessible and iterated in a learning health care system.
This isn't the way the biomedical community has traditionally worked, but we must evolve. If such a digitally-connected ecosystem can be achieved, we can create a 21st century health enterprise that connects individuals, organizations, institutions, and their information in a seamless and continuous cycle of discovery, faster diagnostic and pharmaceutical product development, and improved clinical care. We must connect together to create our knowledge cloud and we must do so now. These extraordinary times demand it.
Sincerely,
Ken
Director, NCI Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology NCI CBIIT
