European-Canadian Cancer Network

EUCANCan is a European Canadian cooperation funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The four-year project aims at enhancing modern oncology, by implementing a cultural, technological and legal integrated framework across Europe and Canada, to enable and facilitate the efficient analysis, management and sharing of cancer genomic data.

This cooperative framework is not only expected to immediately contribute to improve biomedical research in cancer, but to also serve as a model for globalizing and enriching Personalized Medicine initiatives, allowing the exchange of data, clinical experience and information across different national health systems.

EUCANCan’s major efforts are directed to tackle current cultural, technical and ethico-legal limitations that prevent the sharing and the reuse of existing and newly generated genome oncology data.

These major efforts have organised our internal work plan into some major tasks

1

Homogenize protocols for genome analysis (variant calling and interpretation) that allows the direct comparison of genomic results without the need of reanalysis.

2

Generation of standards for the organization, indexing and sharing of clinical data, close or inside healthcare systems.

3

Implement interoperability protocols for data storage, indexing, and exchange between the different nodes, including replicated data portals for searching and accessing data.

4

Definition of an ethico-legal frame that, not only allows the free and legal exchange of genomic and clinical data between countries, but that also rescues the compromise that the research community has with patients, promoting ethical practices of cooperation and data sharing.

Core activities overview

WP1

Management and Coordination

Lead:
David Torrents BSC, Spain
WP2

Genome analysis pipelines to support the therapeutic decision

Lead:
Emmanuel Barillot IC, France
WP3

Repository and cloud infrastructures

Lead:
Jordi Rambla CRG-EGA, Spain
WP4

A federation of data portals for interoperability across EUCANCan nodes and responsible sharing of patient genomic data

Lead:
Lincoln Stein OIRC, Canada
WP5

Standardized clinical reporting across sites

Lead:
Rodrigo Dienstmann VHIO, Spain

Jürgen Eils UKL-HD, Germany
WP6

Ethico-legal framework for clinical oncology data

Lead:
Bartha Maria Knoppers MCG, Canada

Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor HAdW, Germany
WP7

Dissemination and Exploitation

Lead:
Claudia Schacht LINQ, Germany

EUCANCan will have a duration of four years starting from January 1st 2019.

Team

EUCANCan is coordinated by Prof. David Torrents from the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC). The network will be composed of reference nodes in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Heidelberg, Paris and Toronto which have established strong research and clinical programs in the field of genomic oncology.

A Canada-Europe Federated network for the globalisation of  Genomic Oncology and Personalized Medicine