Tsiknakis M, Rueping S, Martin L, Sfakianakis S, Bucur A, Sengstag T, Brochhausen M, Pucaski J, Graf N
Biomedical Informatics Laboratory, Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research & Technology-Hellas, GR-71110 Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
Ecancermedicalscience. 2007;1:56. doi: 10.3332/ecms.2007.56. Epub 2007 Sep 21.
Life sciences are currently at the centre of an information revolution. The nature and amount of information now available opens up areas of research that were once in the realm of science fiction. During this information revolution, the data-gathering capabilities have greatly surpassed the data-analysis techniques. Data integration across heterogeneous data sources and data aggregation across different aspects of the biomedical spectrum, therefore, is at the centre of current biomedical and pharmaceutical R&D.This paper reports on original results from the ACGT integrated project, focusing on the design and development of a European Biomedical Grid infrastructure in support of multi-centric, post-genomic clinical trials (CTs) on cancer. Post-genomic CTs use multi-level clinical and genomic data and advanced computational analysis and visualization tools to test hypotheses in trying to identify the molecular reasons for a disease and the stratification of patients in terms of treatment.The paper provides a presentation of the needs of users involved in post-genomic CTs and presents indicative scenarios, which drive the requirements of the engineering phase of the project. Subsequently, the initial architecture specified by the project is presented, and its services are classified and discussed. A range of such key services, including the Master Ontology on sCancer, which lie at the heart of the integration architecture of the project, is presented. Special efforts have been taken to describe the methodological and technological framework of the project, enabling the creation of a legally compliant and trustworthy infrastructure. Finally, a short discussion of the forthcoming work is included, and the potential involvement of the cancer research community in further development or utilization of the infrastructure is described.
生命科学目前正处于一场信息革命的中心。如今可得的信息的性质和数量开启了曾经属于科幻领域的研究领域。在这场信息革命期间，数据收集能力已大大超越了数据分析技术。因此，跨异构数据源的数据集成以及跨生物医学领域不同方面的数据聚合，是当前生物医学和制药研发的核心。本文报告了ACGT集成项目的原始成果，重点是设计和开发一个欧洲生物医学网格基础设施，以支持针对癌症的多中心、后基因组临床试验（CTs）。后基因组CTs使用多层次的临床和基因组数据以及先进的计算分析和可视化工具来检验假设，试图确定疾病的分子原因以及患者在治疗方面的分层情况。本文介绍了参与后基因组CTs的用户的需求，并展示了一些典型场景，这些场景推动了项目工程阶段的要求。随后，介绍了项目指定的初始架构，并对其服务进行了分类和讨论。展示了一系列此类关键服务，包括位于项目集成架构核心的癌症主本体。已经做出特别努力来描述项目的方法和技术框架，以创建一个符合法律规定且值得信赖的基础设施。最后，对即将开展的工作进行了简短讨论，并描述了癌症研究界可能参与基础设施的进一步开发或利用的情况。
