Cancer Research Horizons has joined Lifebit’s Federated Data Network to help maximise the impact of data generated through Cancer Research UK-funded research.
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This federated network leverages Lifebit’s Platform to ensure secure access to standardised datasets of millions of cancer patients from multiple international institutions for use in secure, large-scale cross-cohort analyses.
Under the partnership agreement, Cancer Research Horizons becomes a member of the network with the ability to upload information on its datasets to the Lifebit Platform. Once available on the platform, companies will be able to request access to datasets by submitting a research proposal detailing the analyses they intend to perform.
Cancer Research Horizons’ Data Access Committee, which includes patients, will review research proposals to determine if they are appropriate for the data. For successful proposals, the Lifebit Platform will allow the company to perform analyses on the data in combination with other datasets from within the network, providing the federated results of the analyses back to the company as the final output, protecting the safety and security of the dataset.
Tony Hickson, chief business officer of Cancer Research Horizons, said: “The partnership builds on Cancer Research Horizons’ ambition to increase secure and transparent commercial and academic access to high-quality cancer datasets generated by Cancer Research UK-funded researchers. In particular, the Lifebit Platform increases the reach and diversity of potential users of the data and allows our data to be combined with datasets from a wide range of leading institutions to enable population-scale analyses.”
Thorben Seeger, chief business development officer of Lifebit, said: “Especially in oncology, collaboration over data cohorts is critical as it is often hard to find enough counts to achieve sufficient statistical power for a specific stratification. Having Cancer Research Horizons join the Federated Data Network means we can support even more research needs from pharma and biotech companies as Lifebit uniquely draws from a global network of leading clinico-molecular cohorts.”
Cancer Research Horizons will initially make its multi-omic clinically linked colorectal cancer database, S: CORT, available through the platform, with the intention to expand this to other datasets in the future. Importantly this partnership, and the use of data through the federated Lifebit Platform will align with Cancer Research Horizons’ Commercial Data Partnership Guiding Principles, ensuring safe and transparent use of patient-derived data with the primary aim of positive patient impact.