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Redefine how research is conducted, care is provided, and patients and participants interact with the biomedical research enterprise by building the necessary interconnected web of data, individuals, and organizations and making it accessible to all who need it.
The exponential expansion of biomedical knowledge is generating a tidal wave of data. As biomedical research becomes an increasingly collaborative undertaking, the research arena is finding itself hampered by the "silo" approach to solving data management challenges.
- Most existing databases have developed independently, with tremendous variability in rules, processes, vocabularies, data content, and analytical tools.
- There is no unifying architecture to support the essential interoperability among databases and exchange of data.
Parallel advances in bioinformatics are needed to address these issues and to accelerate the pace of discovery within and across scientific research centers.
NCI's bioinformatics strategy is to use information technology to integrate biomedical information in order to make it accessible to researchers across disciplines. Such harmonization will have a major national impact. For example:
- Collaborations among individuals and institutions will become easier to initiate and carry out.
- Clinical trials will be completed more quickly in multi-institutional settings.
- The critical new frontier of genotype-phenotype correlative analyses will be greatly facilitated.
Our long-term goal for bioinformatics is to redefine how research is conducted, care is provided, and patients and participants interact with the biomedical research enterprise. We will do this by building an interconnected web of data, individuals, and organizations and making it accessible to all who need it.
To achieve this goal, NCI will:
- Create and implement an informatics platform that integrates diverse data types and analytic tools, and facilitates the sharing of data among investigators within and across disciplines.
- Capture and share data from clinical studies by linking networks of community practitioners, clinical research organizations, managed care providers, advocates, academic centers, and individuals.
- Create a consortium for developing a novel infrastructure and tools to facilitate complex biomedical data mining and integration.
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Support to Discovery, Development, and Delivery
Support to Discovery, Development, and Delivery
Developing New Bioinformatics Tools and Infrastructure
Unprecedented amounts of data and information - clinical trial results, molecular signature information, and preclinical and animal models - are available to current researchers. However, many of the systems in which this rich and sophisticated collection of data is stored are incapable of communicating with other systems. NCI is committed to developing a means to address this complexity by:
- Integrating platforms and synthesizing data.
- Developing a spectrum of infrastructure, tools, templates, and standards for biomedical informatics that can meet the needs of the cancer research community.
- Collaborating with a variety of institutions and make our products and services available at no cost to scientists.
Biomedical informatics systems are integral to NCI's:
Through the Cancer Molecular Analysis Project (CMAP), NCI facilitates the identification and evaluation of molecular targets by integrating comprehensive molecular characterizations of cancer and making the data and infrastructure publicly accessible. CMAP permits investigators to:
- Discover molecular targets
- Assess their validity and interaction with other targets
- Determine if there are therapeutic agents that can act on specific targets
- Screen for possible toxicity
- Determine whether there are clinical trials evaluating these agents.
Setting Standards That Allow Systems to "Talk" with One Another
NCI's Center for Bioinformatics has developed the cancer Common Ontologic Reference Environment (caCORE), a system for combining and generating knowledge. A key component of the caCORE is NCI's Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS). Collaboratively developed, the EVS team:
- Organizes and translates the distinct and overlapping vocabularies of scientific projects via one common vocabulary and two broadly used vocabulary resources, the NCI Thesaurus and Metathesaurus.
- Works with vendors to create and improve tools for vocabulary development and curation.
Partnering to Leverage Resources and Encourage Growth
New strategic partnerships are underway to promote the integration of disparate bioinformatics efforts throughout the cancer research community, establish common language, and promote sharing of bioinformatics infrastructure and data.
One such partnership is between NCI and the NCI-supported Cancer Centers. The focus of this partnership is on building a coordinated program to leverage existing infrastructure and inform future development across NCI and the entire community of Cancer Centers.
- In its pilot phase, the program will fund a small number of representative Cancer Centers that will be responsible for broadly assessing requirements, existing infrastructure, and development priorities.
- New tools and infrastructure will be deployed at test sites.
- Feedback gathered during the pilot will drive improvement priorities.
- Finally, the tools and infrastructure will be fully deployed to the cancer center community.
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Support to Discovery and Development
Support to Delivery
Support to Discovery and Development
| 1. | Enable data generated among investigators in diverse disciplines to be transparently connected and shared by creating and implementing an informatics platform that integrates diverse data types and analytic tools. | $20.00 M |
- Complete the pilot of an NCI-developed informatics platform in a selected group of Cancer Centers, Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPOREs), and NCI intramural laboratories. $5.00 M
- Refine current and develop additional modules, software bridges, and infrastructure extension based on the results of the pilot. $2.50 M
- Expand NCI help desk capabilities to better serve the needs of the project. $2.50 M
- Make the resources available to additional Cancer Centers, SPOREs, and intramural groups. $10.00 M
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| 2. | Facilitate complex biomedical data mining and integration by creating a consortium charged with developing a novel infrastructure and tools. | $10.00 M |
- Identify academic, government, and industrial developers who are willing to produce open-source tools that are interoperable with NCI's architecture and that support community-identified needs and NCI-determined priorities.
- Establish a mechanism for working together to develop data mining and data integration tools.
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Support to Delivery
| 3. | Link networks of community practitioners, clinical research organizations, managed care providers, and academic centers by capturing and sharing data from clinical research investigations. | $10.00 M |
- Capture clinical research data through a Web-based reporting system piloted with volunteers from SPOREs, Cancer Centers, and NCI intramural groups. $5.00 M
- Extend the infrastructure to permit integration with and sharing of other data types and to support clinical research beyond therapeutic and prevention trials. $1.00 M
- Pilot in additional cancer research settings a Web-based clinical trials support infrastructure developed in the NCI Intramural Program, SPOREs, and Cancer Centers. $2.00 M
- Develop open-source clinical trials modules that can be freely distributed to other academic research centers, community practices, and private practices. $2.00 M
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| | Management and Support | $0.80 M |
| | Total | $40.80 M |
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Bioinformatics technology ensures that the growing tide of cancer information is made available to individuals, groups, and institutions for research and clinical practice. The goal of NCI's Center for Bioinformatics (NCICB)support includes bioinformatics platforms, services, tools, and data. The Center:
- Participates in the evaluation and prioritization of NCI's bioinformatics research portfolio
- Conducts and facilitates bioinformatics research
- Serves as the locus for strategic planning to address expanding informatics needs
- Establishes information technology and exchange standards both within and outside of NCI
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NCI plans to deploy a biomedical informatics infrastructure called the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid, or caBIG. As part of this effort, NCI, in partnership with others in the cancer research community, is creating a common, extensible informatics platform that integrates diverse data types and supports interoperable analytic tools. This platform will allow research groups to tap into the rich collection of emerging cancer research data while supporting their individual investigations.
Cancer Centers provide the institutional framework around which much of NCI-supported research is conducted. NCI is working with a representative sample of these Cancer Centers in the pilot phase of the project to join their resources into a common web of communications, data, and applications.
The caBIG pilot includes:
- "Co-developers" that contribute mature infrastructure and applications.
- "Adapters/adopters" that take contributed infrastructure and applications and implement or adapt them for local needs.
- "Users" that utilize the applications and infrastructure provided, contribute data sets and study populations, and assist in establishing the needed functionality of the caBIG effort.
NCI is soliciting ongoing feedback from the Cancer Centers through working groups engaged in specific development areas, workshops to review models and system development, and a project Website (caBIG.nci.nih.gov) and mailing list. The workshops and Web site are available to the entire cancer research community. As consensus is achieved, projects are executed and implemented, initially at the funded pilot centers and then more broadly across the Cancer Centers, Specialized Programs of Research Excellence, new NCI research initiatives, and intramural research programs.
The caBIG pilot effort strives to:
- Maintain the current momentum of the informatics efforts at NCI.
- Create tools and systems that are adaptable to different institutional settings, meet Food and Drug Administration compliance requirements, and can retrieve common information important to biomedical research from existing biomedical information systems.
- Involve all Cancer Centers through updates of progress and solicitation of comments and feedback, while working directly with a few Centers for pilot development.
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