In the field of cancer there are many challenges e.g.

• tumour heterogeneity;
• investigation of new enzymes;
• the fight against contamination;
• tumour evolution;
• cancer progression;
• harmonization of data from electronic health records.

To address the needs of this complex landscape ‘cancer data’ has been identified as one of the “Use Cases” of the EU Member State driven 1+ Million Genomes initiative. Additionally, ‘cancer data’ has been identified by Horizon Europe as one of five “Mission Areas”.

The objective of this Focus Group is to discuss the common bioinformatic needs that Use Cases of working within the cancer field pose to the ELIXIR Nodes; to afford the opportunity to proactively identify the topics at the intersection of ELIXIR’s priorities and this European research area. This will enable ELIXIR to dynamically map the gathered information towards these topics where possible.

Goals of the group

A core activity in scope for this Focus Group is to present “Gold Standard” examples from ELIXIR Nodes (e.g. research institutes, hospitals and clinics) in working with cancer related data in order to highlight the opportunities arising from data, tools and platform interoperability, and to promote the added value from unobstructed data sharing of cancer data for biomedical research and applications.

A planned outcome is the publication of a positioning paper on recommendations from ELIXIR on cancer data related best practices, and where the bioinformatic infrastructure gaps are across Europe in working with cancer data.

Mailing List

cancer_data_focus_group [at] elixir-europe.org

Group chairs