The Latest in the World of Cancer Research

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    • Scientists at Polytechnique Montréal, Université de Montréal and McGill University have developed nanorobotic agents with the capability of going through the bloodstream and administering a drug with precision by specifically targeting the active cancerous cells of tumors. Further discussion is found in Nature Nanotechnology.
    • Cancer survivors have long complained of cognitive decline following chemotherapy. This effect has been dubbed “chemo brain.” A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, set out to investigate the effects of chemo brain over a longer period of time. Their findings provided one of the first animal models to demonstrate the long-term cognitive deficits resulting from a chemotherapeutic treatment used in treating humans for breast cancer. The results were published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research.
    • Cancer overtakes heart disease as number one cause of death in 12 European nations. The report can be found in European Heart Journal.
    • A randomized study published in the NEJM, found that the MammaPrint test that analyzes the 70 critical genes identified in breast cancer, demonstrated improved prediction of clinical outcomes for early-stage breast cancer in women.  The study involved over 6000 patients, 1500 of which were identified as low risk based on genomic factors.  These 1500 were later randomly assigned to two groups where one group received chemo and the other group did not. After five years, survival rates were similar.
    • The New York Times recently published a series of articles that explore the novel uses of immunotherapy to combat cancer:

Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Enhancing the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Digital Curation for Biomedical Big Data

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BD2K is a trans-NIH initiative that funds research and training activities supporting the use of Big Data to advance biomedical research and discovery. This includes efforts in enhancing training, resource indexing, methods and tools development, and other data science-related areas.

Yesterday, the NIH posted a new funding opportunity that seeks to accelerate the availability and re-use of biomedical research data by transforming the processes used to curate digital data assets. Applications should propose the development of new tools and approaches, or build upon existing open-source tools and pipelines in order to enhance the efficiency, control the costs, and improve the quality of digital curation. Letters of intent are due on November 1, 2016. For more information, see: Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Enhancing the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Digital Curation for Biomedical Big Data (U01).

Also, check out another funding opportunity recently announced under the BD2K initiative: Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Community-Based Data and Metadata Standards Efforts (R24). This opportunity focuses on making data more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) by promoting and facilitating the use of data and metadata standards. Letters of intent are due 30 days before the application due date of October 19, 2016.