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CHICAGO — Vice President Biden on Monday announced the launch of a first-of-its kind, open-access cancer database to allow researchers to better understand the disease and develop more effective treatments.
The Genomic Data Commons, a part of the National Cancer Institute, contains the raw genomic and clinical data for 12,000 patients, with more records to come as researchers contribute to it, he said. Besides detailed analyses of the molecular makeup of cancers, the database has information on which treatments were used and how patients responded.
Biden announced the GDC start in remarks to thousands of researchers, physicians and patient advocates at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting. Earlier in the day, he’d visited the University of Chicago, which is housing the database and will manage it for NCI.
Biden told the cancer doctors that the database will encourage needed collaboration among scientists in different disciplines to ferret out important aspects of cancer and find new ways to help patients.
The way research currently is conducted hinges on “the cult of the individual,” Biden said, and fails to adequately...