A Japanese case of breast cancer with BRCA1 mutation

Abstract

s / The Breast 20 (2011) S12–S55 S27 burden, and slower transfer of new discoveries and technologies into clinical practice. Methods: The objective of INTEGRATE, a European Commission funded project involving six European partners, is to build a data-sharing platform for all forms of data generated from clinical trials. The dynamic environment will collect, manage and provide secure and compliant access to complex and novel datasets for the biomedical community, including basic scientists, translational, and clinical researchers as well as the pharmaceutical industry to enhance cooperative research. It will be specifically designed to manage complex genomic data that can be used for molecular screening of patients for clinical trials as well as for analysis of clinical, pathology and imaging data. INTEGRATE will involve reuse and adaptation of existing openly available services and tools, as well as development of new technologies and analysis tools specifically for this data sharing environment. The INTEGRATE platform will initially be tested using data generated in neoadjuvant breast cancer clinical trials run by the Breast International Group (BIG). This will subsequently be expanded to include the setting of adjuvant and metastatic breast cancer and potentially other forms of cancer as well. Results: Experts from multiple disciplines, such as medical oncology, knowledge engineering, IT, basic bioscience, and ethical bodies have collaborated to define the scope of the platform. To ensure semantic interoperability and support reuse, the semantics of the domain will be captured in a core dataset using standardised terminologies such as SNOMED CT, ICD-O and LOINC, defined in collaboration with the end-user research community. The INTEGRATE platform will also support the development, preservation and sharing of multi-scale predictive models. The technical INTEGRATE environment will be based on an open serviceoriented architecture. An effort will be made to ensure that INTEGRATE is compatible with other similar existing platforms, and that the highest standards of data security and privacy are adopted. Conclusions: INTEGRATE will develop a standards-based environment that will support co-ordinated and collaborative biomedical research by allowing optimal exploitation of breast cancer clinical trial data, and thus potentially contribute to significant advancements in cancer research.