NCI Cancer Data Science

Welcome to our NCI Cancer Data Science LinkedIn page, where you can connect, engage, and grow your technical and professional skills for #CancerResearch #DataScience! To start us off, we have a short message for you from Jill Barnholtz-Sloan, PhD, acting director for NCI’s Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology.

Have you heard the buzz? 🐝 Here are the top three most read #NCICBIIT news pieces from October: 1. Tap into two newly published articles to see what some prominent researchers are saying about the cancer #informatics field and where it’s headed. 2. If you want to learn more about the noncoding regions of DNA that impact cancer and its resistance to treatment, then this new NCI-funded computational tool may help. 3. Listen in to a recent podcast to hear from Acting #NCICBIIT Director Jill Barnholtz-Sloan, PhD. She shares how informatics, #DataScience, and epidemiology are interconnected; her personal career journey, and advice for how you can become a successful cancer researcher. Take a peek! https://lnkd.in/ewVP2ydd

#ToolTuesday time! We’re featuring a training that #NCICBIIT organized for NCI intramural investigators to learn how to upload data files, run single-cell analysis, and navigate public data sets within the web-based bioinformatics analysis toolkit, WebMeV. Thank you, Dr. Daoud Meerzaman and your team for sharing this resource with the community! You can access this training video and many more whenever it’s convenient for you. https://lnkd.in/eyQ9QSPY

An important part of clinical trials is the collection of adverse events, and not reporting these events can lead to deadly outcomes. NCI, along with partnering agencies, released the United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI+) Cancer Immune-related Adverse Events (irAE) draft data set, and feedback is needed. If you have previously conducted immunotherapy studies and reported adverse events, please respond by January 10, 2025. Data set questions include: -is it complete and relevant for detecting and reporting immune-related adverse events? -does it address key data standards, codes, and terms? -are there challenges for collecting and sharing the data electronically? https://lnkd.in/e_MSGKVP

We recently mentioned several events that are instore for the remainder of the year where you’ll be able to connect with #NCICBIIT staff. During the U.S. Southeast Healthcare Innovation Summit in Atlanta, our Acting Director, Dr. Jill Barnholtz-Sloan, will be discussing the role of #AI in personalized medicine and advancing healthcare in the region. Please comment below if you’ll be attending so Jill can make sure to look out for you. https://lnkd.in/e6Wq2BPv

Quick reminder – the deadline to apply for an iCURE #Fellowship is coming up! This is a fantastic opportunity to network and develop your data science skills. In fact, here are some of the 2024 projects that you could work on with NCI: · Help Dr. Sridhar Hannenhalli in the NCI Center for Cancer Research’s Cancer Data Science Lab on projects to investigate transcriptional heterogeneity, cellular plasticity, and regulatory mechanisms underlying oncogenesis, explore the development and homeostatic origins of cancers, develop deep learning models to identify mutations underlying cancer, and study the intrinsic and extrinsic functionality of genes and cells. · Help Dr. Rick Moser in NCI’s Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences to work with the team that administers the annual Health information National Trends Survey (HINTS). You would manage, run statistical analyses on, and present on the data about the American public’s knowledge, attitude, and use of cancer information. Furthermore, you’ll help develop the GEM portal, to promote and disseminate common measures for prospective research to increase data harmonization and comparability. · Help Dr. Tongwu Zhang in NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics investigate cancer genetics and genomics using advanced computational methods and sequencing technologies. Apply by Monday, November 25, to be considered! https://lnkd.in/e4qGnfKm

There are so many talented students pursuing research in cancer data science, and today, we get to spotlight 3 of them! Help us congratulate Moinak Bhattacharya, Sriya Potluri, and Kartik Singhal, for winning the poster competition at the National Cancer Institute’s Informatics Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR) Program annual meeting. • 1st place - Moinak (as part of Prateek Prasanna’s lab) presented on a machine learning model to help determine the association between the geometric structure of a patient’s pulmonary arteries and their response to treatment, survival, and other clinical features. Poster Title: Immunotherapy Treatment Outcome Prediction in Small Cell Lung Cancer through Topo-Geometric Characterization of Pulmonary Artery Vasculature: A Proof-of-Concept Study. Read the paper this poster was based off of: https://lnkd.in/eBHcApGY • 2nd place - Sriya (working as part of Dr. Pablo Gonzalez-Camara’s lab) presented on an upcoming paper about leveraging the Immunopheno software package to analyze antigens or markers on cancerous surfaces. Poster Title: Data-driven Analyses of Immunophenotyping Data Using ImmunoPheno You can try out the tool mentioned in the poster: https://lnkd.in/eNSu5Ju9 • 3rd place - Kartik (a member of Drs. Malachi and Obi Griffiths’s lab) presented on a recent publication exploring the feasibility of personalizing cancer vaccines through genomic and RNA sequencing techniques. Poster Title: Immune Validation of Neoantigen Vaccines Through Clonal ITCR Analysis in Patients with Pancreas Cancer. Read the paper this poster was based off of: https://lnkd.in/e25sdHx6 And thank you to our ITCR-funded Principal Investigators for helping mentor and provide opportunities to train the next generation of cancer data science researchers! #Every1HasARole

November 8 may have passed but #STEMDay, and its reminder to encourage the next generation of STEM professionals, is always on our mind. So, let’s keep the celebration going with tips on how you can advance your cancer #DataScience career with this blog from NCI’s Dr. Tongwu Zhang. Share a piece of your own advice too! https://lnkd.in/gDKhy_fD

Thank you to all the veterans who have served our country! We’re proud to share that cancer data science professionals are working to serve veterans with cancer through programs like the Big Data Scientist Training Enhancement Program (BD-STEP). BD-STEP uses #DataScience to advance #CancerResearch by leveraging the Veterans Health Administration’s healthcare data resources and NCI cancer research expertise. Here’s what a recent participant had to say about the program: “My time with BD-STEP continues to give me the opportunity to use my data science skills and background to contribute to projects that focus on improving veteran healthcare outcomes. It’s been a rewarding experience to be a part of initiatives that directly support the veteran community while also being able to share real world perspectives on the issues that many veterans face and experience.” – Robert Mitchell, BD-STEP participant Learn more about this program: https://lnkd.in/eCd82RcZ

Today, around the nation and throughout #NCICBIIT, we honor #STEMDay. 🔬 What inspired you to get interested in cancer #DataScience? Make sure to comment below and share with your network to help inspire others!