People-Focused: Charles Donnelly at The Jackson Laboratory
The Jackson Laboratory Cancer Center is focused on the leveraging the power of mouse genetics and genomics for cancer research and for developing disease models that improve the prevention, diagnosis and early detection of cancer in humans. To aid in this work, the Jackson Laboratory has deployed caArray in order to make their internal data repositories available through the Grid. Chuck Donnelly, Director of Computational Sciences, discusses how caBIG® is transforming research at Jackson Labs.
On caBIG® deployment achievements...
"The deployment of caArray has allowed us to create a state-of-the-art microarray analysis system for our research staff by providing a means of simplified access to data analysis tools that were previously inaccessible because of their complexity or simply unavailable. In addition to driving a shift in the way research is taking place at our lab, caArray has also enabled us to make our data available to other institutions."
On overcoming deployment challenges...
"Adopting, adapting, and integrating caArray was a considerable endeavor that required the expertise and hard work of a truly cross-functional team. Researchers, technology experts, and statisticians all had to work together for us to achieve success and make the tools available to our researchers. This sort of 'team science' is representative of what is taking place throughout biomedical research and was critical to our efforts."
On the future of caBIG® at the Jackson Laboratory...
"The data currently available on the Grid from the Jackson Laboratory is only a small percentage of what is currently stored in our repositories. Moving forward, we are committed to making as many of our data sets available as possible. Our future plans also include leveraging the power of the caGrid to integrate experimentally derived mouse data sets with strain survey phenome data further connecting genetics to phenotype. We believe these animal model data will enable cancer research by informing pre-clinical and clinical studies in humans, essentially initiating a paradigm-shift in the way research is currently taking place."
