EOSC4Cancer

Started in September 2022, EOSC4Cancer aims to establish a pan-European infrastructure that can support the discovery, access, and analysis of extensive clinical and molecular datasets across borders. Better access, management, interoperability and reuse of digital information can be achieved by using and integrating existing resources, best practices, and tools to manage cancer research data in preparation for the EU Mission on Cancer. 

The project is driven by five use cases connected with different stages along the Cancer Patient Journey, from prevention and early detection to diagnosis and treatment. Use cases cover prevalent data flows in cancer research that will lay the foundation for future projects. EOSC4Cancer will facilitate finding and accessing genomics, imaging, and medical and clinical data using and enhancing existing interoperable systems, including federated ones, which would support the use and re-use of cancer-related data for research activities. 

Health-RI is partner in WP5, Training and capacity building for key national and international stakeholders More particularly, Health-RI is leading the activity to establish a network of key cancer data support professionals. The network has been launched in 2023 and the experts in the network will contribute with their expertise to the EOSC4Cancer goals, i.e. making an inventory of training resources, mapping the skills needed, and creating a Cancer Data Domain page in the RDMkit. 

Through its partners the National Cancer Institute (NKI) and Lygature, Health-RI is also coordinating the use cases work package (WP4) in EOSC4Cancer. The five use cases following the patient journey from onset of disease till late stage metastatic cancer are centered around one tumour type (colorectal cancer). Supporting these use cases, Health-RI offers access and service to cBioPortal, an exploratory analysis tool for exploring large-scale cancer genomic data sets. For instance, The Dutch multi-target FIT (mtFIT) clinical trial serves as a use case within EOSC4Cancer which is a prospective study embedded within the Dutch colorectal cancer (CRC) screening organization. Data has been imported in the EOSC4Cancer reference instance of cBioPortal, hosted by Health-RI. 

EOSC4Cancer also serves as a gateway to orchestrate the integration of the researcher’s journey and the data life cycle for oncology data in the Netherlands. In line with a letter to parliament  (“Kamerbrief over visie en strategie secundair datagebruik gezondheidszorg”), we, as a leading community, should set the stage in the realisation of the 4 action lines (i.e. Interoperability, generic functions, legal basis and trust environment) highlighted in the letter. Forces are therefore joined in setting up the Dutch National Cancer Research Data Node, also in the context of the EU Federated Cancer Research Data Platform under UNCAN.eu.