Massive Genome, Cancer Databases Made Public
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a consortium of cancer research groups both announced this week they are releasing their respective databases-NIH's 1000 Genomes Project and the group's Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE) project-to the public. The moves open the world's largest set of human genetic variation and more than 1,000 cancer cell lines to public and industry use.
NIH's announcement on 29 March said its 200-terabyte 1000 Genomes Project would be made public by way of Amazon's Web Services cloud service. NIH also said it was teaming up with "at least six federal agencies" to commit more than $200 million to "develop core technologies and other resources needed by researchers to manage and analyze enormous data sets."
"Improving access to data from this important project will accelerate the ability of researchers to understand human genetic variation and its contribution to health and disease," said NHGRI director Eric D. Green, M.D., Ph.D.
The second group-a partnership between pharmaceutical manufacturer Novartis International AG and cancer research groups The Broad Institute and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute-announced 28 March they are releasing their CCLE Project of more than 1,000 cancer cell lines to the public.
"We hope that many in industry and academia will use these data to discover new drug targets, to evaluate current therapies, and to facilitate treatment for their patients with cancer," said Mark Fishman, president of Novartis' Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR).
"The Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia will provide scientists with the ability to build predictive models of what types of patients will respond to a particular class of drugs," added William Sellers, global head of oncology at NIBR.
Read more:
NIH - 1000 Genomes Project data available on Amazon Cloud
Novartis launches the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE) to catalogue world's cancer cell lines
Medical News Today - First Volume Of The Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia Made Public