Making Dana-Farber more scientifically 'resource-full'
As their participation in clinical and basic research grows
increasingly high tech, DFCI scientists share additional findings and
insights with each other - and the world.
By Robert Levy
Dana-Farber scientists offer up a menu of data, software,
tissue, and other useful tools.
(Illustrations by David Cutler)
For as long as scientists have been publishing their work —— concisely reporting the aim of their experiments, their materials and methods, findings and conclusions —— the results have been the common property of investigators everywhere.
In cancer research, the need for massive computer power and advanced cell-processing machinery has created new incentives for sharing data and materials with the scientific community. Some investigators are generating more raw information than they or their laboratories could ever hope to analyze themselves. Others have made such a large investment of time, dollars, and technical know-how that it would be unreasonable to expect colleagues elsewhere to make the same expenditures.
The result is that scientists are making available a higher level of data, and more readily usable data—either free or at relatively low cost—than ever before. At the same time, experts in biostatistics and the emerging field of computational biology are providing researchers with more sophisticated software for analyzing and making sense of experimental results.
At Dana-Farber, data sharing is as prevalent as research itself. Investigators participating in clinical trials of new treatments send their results to the trial leaders; others contribute to tissue banks or supply data from survivor studies. The same trend is found among basic scientists and computational experts, whose work provides the raw material for research around the globe —— making DFCI, in the process, a more resource-full institution.
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