Virtual BSC RS/BSC Life Session: Block by block: building a data science infrastructure for cancer research on the cloud

Abstract

With decreasing cost of genomic sequencing, cancer research groups are generating large multi-omics and single cell data for various cancer types along with histopathology and radiological images. Researchers face major challenges in secure data management, efficient data analysis and responsible data sharing. At the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), the Genome Informatics team has developed such software solutions for the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), and has made them available to researchers in an open-source software suite called Overture. In addition, we have built a compute cloud called the Cancer Genome Collaboratory enabling researchers to perform analyses on over one petabyte of cancer genomic data. We are continuing to build out the infrastructure of the genomics cloud in close collaboration with the cancer informatics community particularly in the ICGC Accelerating Research in Genomic Oncology (ARGO) initiative and the European-Canadian Cancer Network (EUCANCan).