Activities

WP1 will be dedicated to coordinate the overall technical and scientific work of the whole project. Moreover, it will establish quality control actions and detect training needs of the consortium.

WP2 will take care of the data flow between healthcare institutions and sequencing facilities to EUCANCan nodes and the EGA.

WP3 will aim at harmonizing and unifying in silico analysis protocols (including variant identification and functional interpretation) across EUCANCan nodes, to allow the posterior exchange and integration of the results of the different studies generated, setting up a common technical environment for genome analysis that allows and promotes the sharing of data. Deliverables from this WP include compute facilities, open to EUCANCan and ARGO participants, which implement standard alignment, variant-calling, and genome annotation pipelines.

WP4 will work to (1) install a toolset in each EUCANCan node to index genomic data files and publish the metadata that describes these files to the Internet; (2) develop a metadata browser allowing researchers to discover EUCANCan-produced clinical/genomic data sets; (3) develop a service to be installed on each EUCANCan node to initiate a file transfer of a selected set of genomic files and their associated metadata; (4) informed by WP2, implement a uniform software pipeline for annotating the nature and functional impact of somatic and germline variants identified by genomic and transcriptomic sequencing; and (5) provide metadata search.

This demonstrator of the EUCANCan project will implement the technologies and standards developed and implemented by WP2, WP3 and WP4 in real clinical cases by defining common data formats, standards and terminologies for the sharing of genomic oncology data.

The overall strategy of the project is only possible with the appropriate ethical and legal advising from experts in the topic. MCG, UPV/EHU and HdAW have been involved in several genomic and clinical initiatives, such as ICGC, assuring the accomplishment of WP6 objectives, which aims at assessing the sharing of genomic and clinical data across borders. WP6 will connect with WPs 1 through 5, as it will be required to map and identify the data life cycle of the health data involved in the system and to identify ethico-legal considerations that arise in the data-sharing workflows. WP5 will serve as a direct use case for the development of prototype tools for legal compliance in research collaborations beyond human genome oncology.

WP7 will help optimize the impact of the overall project by disseminating results to various target audiences and by supporting and guiding their uptake and use. Dedicated activities will streamline communication, facilitate networking, and pave the way to translating results into policy.