New Contest Crowdsources the Fight Against Cancer

Interested in crowdsourcing? Interested in fighting cancer? Here ya go.

“The Challenge tackles three key questions about the sub-clonality of cancer: how many subclones are within any given tumour, how did these subclones grow and evolve, and which genetic mutations are present in each subclones? Using a method to simulate DNA sequencing data that closely mimics data from real human tumours, which was initially developed as part of a previous DREAM challenge, the team has created a set of 50 tumours with distinctive life-histories and evolutions. Contestants will create tools in the cloud using Google Compute Engine that will be run in Galaxy, a widely-used open-source platform for performing biomedical research. Contestants will also use Docker images to setup the environment for their tool to run in, allowing the tools to easily be ported to other systems. Further, the use of Docker images and the tools’ compatibility with Galaxy ensures that all submissions are immediately usable after the Challenge, creating a new library of algorithms that researchers can use in future studies and allowing the results of these studies to be compared in an objective way.”