In town to address the world’s largest gathering of cancer doctors about the White House’s National Cancer Moonshot Initiative, Vice President Joe Biden stopped at the University of Chicago to unveil a groundbreaking national cancer database now housed there.
Funded by the National Cancer Institute and designed by the U. of C., the Genomic Data Commons is expected to eventually serve as a one-stop repository for clinical data — including that arising from limited clinical trials — making it easier for researchers and doctors to tailor new treatments for patients.
“I can’t tell you how excited I am about this,” said Biden, who leads the initiative to eliminate cancer announced by President Barack Obama in this year’s State of the Union Address, during a one-hour tour of the Center for Data Intensive Science on the U. of C. campus.
“This is good news for the fight against cancer. It will critically speed development of lifesaving treatment for patients,” Biden said.
Later, in his address to the American Society of Clinical Oncology at McCormick Place, Biden urged the society to support the Moonshot’s comprehensive and unified approach — instead of an individual and proprietary one — to accelerate discovery of cancer treatments.
“You’re not going to like this, but imagine if you all worked together? You’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars. Imagine if it was coordinated,” Biden said, promoting the shared database during his half-hour speech.
“There’s a growing recognition of the need for more team science. . . . We’re in need of some ideas to speed this process up,” Biden said.
The Genomic Data Commons launched with the genomic and clinical data of 12,000 patients. It’s accessible to researchers and physicians, and it’s designed to increase sharing of findings on gene sequences of tumors and how patients with those tumors respond to specific treatments.
“Today, making discoveries from cancer genomic data is challenging because diverse research groups analyze different cancer data sets using various methods that are not easily comparable,” said Robert Grossman, a U. of C. professor of medicine and principal investigator for the Genomic Data Commons.
Development of the Genomic Data Commons began in 2014. Researchers spent the last two years creating an innovative suite of tools, software and infrastructure to curate the massive amounts of data.
Biden, whose son, Beau, died of brain cancer last year at 46, told the society that the disease is among today’s top global challenges.
“I was recently in the Middle East, talking about ISIS, and every leader I met within every country, the first thing they said to me was, ‘Mr. Vice President, can I talk to you about your Moonshot Initiative?’ ” Biden said.
“Like any family facing cancer, my family and I did everything in our power to learn everything we could about the cancer my son was fighting. We relied on the best doctors in the world and we saw how our doctors and every one of you are constantly learning from direct experience what will work and what won’t work, day to day,” he said.
“I saw that no single oncologist or cancer researcher can find the answer on his or her own. We have reached an inflection point, in my view,” Biden said. “We have to use every weapon in our disposal if we’re going to meet our goal. And it requires a changing mindset.”
