Foundation Medicine ($FMI) will release around 18,000 genomic profiles of adult cancers to the Genomic Data Commons (GDC), a cancer database established earlier this month by the NIH as part of the National Cancer Moonshot.
The data comprises de-identified and HIPAA-compliant genomics information from patients who have undergone FMI's genomic test, FoundationOne. It will more than double the size of the GDC, according to a statement.
The GDC is intended to gather data from thousands of cancer patients and tumors in one place and make it available to any cancer researcher. The new infusion of data will help researchers pinpoint mutations that cause cancer in individual patients and identify drugs to target these mutations, the National Cancer Institute said in its statement.
The database is being built and managed by the University of Chicago Center for Data Intensive Science along with the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. At launch, the NIH announced that it would contain data from the NCI's The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments (TARGET), two of the most comprehensive cancer genomics data sets in the world.
"Through TCGA and TARGET, we had already established a strong cancer genomic foundation for the GDC at its launch, but with the addition of the genomic data from Foundation Medicine, we believe that the GDC will be an even more useful resource for researchers worldwide to help us unravel the complexities of many forms of cancer," said Dr. Douglas Lowy, acting director of the NCI, in the statement.
Meanwhile, Stanford Cancer Institute and Intermountain Healthcare have set up a consortium to expand cancer patient access to clinical trials via data sharing. The Oncology Precision Network is beginning with 100,000 data sets in its database and plans to add more as the year progresses.
- here's the release