From April 20 to 22, the EUCANCan consortium held its annual meeting, which was jointly hosted by Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) and Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC). Canadian project coordinator Lincoln Stein (OICR) and Coordinator David Torrents (BSC) chaired the meeting, which was attended by participants from all 18 partner institutions.
Due to the travel restrictions caused by the Covid-19 crisis, the consortium was not able   to meet face-to-face in Toronto as originally planned. Instead, the partners met virtually by video conference to discuss current activities and next steps for the project.
It is the aim of EUCANCan to contribute to the globalization of Genomic Oncology and Personalized Medicine by providing a uniform computing environment for the processing, harmonization and secure sharing of cancer genome and phenome data. In the first year of the project, important first steps have been taken in this direction. For example, a comprehensive overview on the legal requirements and obligations with regard to data sharing has been compiled and the node components for data management are finished so that further decisions on data infrastructures can be taken.
At the annual meeting, the consortium took stock of what has already been achieved and discussed how to proceed in the upcoming months. Specific next steps include preparing the decision on the data portal to be used and a survey among the clinical partners for generating the list of clinical (metadata) variables. As part of the online consortium meeting, the group welcomed Peter Goodhand of the Global Alliance for Global Health (GA4GH) as a guest speaker. Mr Goodhand gave an overview on GA4GH activities and talked about the potential of a cooperation between the Global Alliance and EUCANCan.