Cancer research is highly data intensive, making efficient data management essential to enabling precision medicine for European citizens.
The ELIXIR Cancer Data Community was established early in 2024, following the publication of the Community’s white paper. The Community brings together expertise and resources to gather, manage and analyse clinical and biomedical data. By joining forces with other initiatives focused on human data, including several Horizon Europe-funded projects, ELIXIR aims to enhance the data infrastructure, improving the accessibility, quality and interoperability of data, ultimately accelerating discoveries in biomedical research and enabling better decision-making.
Effective data management involves the adoption of standardised data formats, robust data privacy and the engagement of healthcare professionals. Broad interoperability of data, metadata, research software and computational infrastructure are all critical for data to make a difference to cancer prevention and treatment.
The scope of the Community includes running pilot projects, delivering training and lectures, providing a network of experts to respond to funding opportunities, and influencing the direction of policy development in cancer research.
For more information, have a look at the Cancer Data Focus Group page.
Community goals
Disseminate existing open solutions
- Promote the adoption of global standards to ensure resource interoperability and support effective data sharing
- Further the adoption and distribution of trusted standard and portable pipelines for cancer data analyses and interpretation
Promote cross-project and cross-initiative collaborations
- Create strong connections with other ELIXIR Communities and with core ELIXIR resources (such as FAIR data and database interoperability, for example)
- Bolster the ongoing efforts for cancer use cases in different European projects both for research and towards precision medicine for cancer
Design and develop missing community standards
- Contribute to discoverability and facilitated sharing of cancer data
- Support the development of AI-based solutions trained on large unbiased, high-quality datasets
Leadership
(ELIXIR France)
(ELIXIR Norway)
(ELIXIR Spain)
(ELIXIR Hub)
Find out more
- For questions to the Community co-leads, email: cancer-data-coleads@elixir-europe.org
- The Community mailing list is: cancer-data@elixir-europe.org