THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR CANCER RESEARCH launched an international genomic and clinical data sharing initiative, known as AACR Project Genomics, Evidence, Neoplasia, Information, Exchange—or GENIE.
The initial phase of the project, which is being conducted in partnership with seven global leaders in genomic sequencing for clinical utility as well as two informatics partners, will aggregate participants’ clinical-grade sequencing data.
The seven founding members of the consortium and phase one participants are: The Center for Personalized Cancer Treatment, in Utrecht, Netherlands; Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Institut Gustave Roussy; Johns Hopkins University’s Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center; Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Princess Margaret Cancer Centre; and Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.
The two informatics partners are Sage Bionetworks, of Seattle, and cBioPortal, of New York.
“Numerous factors are driving an increase in the amount of genomic data available for analysis; however, these data are typically insufficient in number or lack the necessary clinical outcomes data to be clinically meaningful,” said Charles Sawyers, chair of the Project GENIE Steering Committee. “Thus, to effectively benefit patients, the genomic and clinical outcomes data from as many institutions as is practical should be combined through a data-sharing initiative.”
The project will pool existing and ongoing CLIA- and ISO-certified sequencing data from the participating institutions into a single registry, and link the data with select clinical outcomes. All project data will be made open-access following defined periods of project exclusivity, and the initial genomic data set will be publicly available Nov. 6, 2016.
The GENIE registry already contains more than 17,000 genomic records.
