Today and Tomorrow

The huge human and economic costs of cancer are growing each day, and the need to address these costs has never been greater. The good news is that the number of cancer deaths is decreasing. NCI has been fighting the war on cancer since the 1970s and has made substantial progress.

For patients and their families who are struggling with this disease or are seeking earlier diagnosis, for researchers and clinicians who need access now to the community’s collective knowledge, and for drug innovators who need to speed the development of life-saving treatments, the NCI has launched this unprecedented effort to share information and connect us all.

Currently, caBIG^® is:

• Deploying caBIG^® tools and infrastructure to virtually all NCI-designated Cancer Centers nationwide, as well as to the participants of NCI's National Community Cancer Centers Program (NCCCP).
• Providing support to caBIG^® adopters through the Enterprise Support Network
• Becoming integrated into the architecture of the National Health Information Network (NHIN)
• Linking all researchers on the caBIG^® network (caGRID)

Moving forward, caBIG^® will be reporting its progress on:

• Generalizing caBIG^® for use in other non-cancer disease applications
• Sharing caBIG^® tools and infrastructure internationally
• Uniting research and care by collaborating with healthcare delivery entities to integrate genomic information into Electronic Health Records (EHRs)

caBIG^® can transform the broader biomedical research community. By serving as a role model, caBIG^® has the potential to strengthen efforts to combat other diseases beyond cancer, where there are similar needs to integrate vast amounts of molecular and clinical data in order to speed the development of better treatments.