Director's Note
The hallmark of caBIG® since inception has been community. When caBIG® originated at the request of the National Cancer Advisory Board in 2003, we were tasked with meeting the needs of the cancer research community—however diverse those needs have been and continue to be—and so it has continued to this day.
In this issue, we hear different "voices" (each one representative of a particular informatics need and a particular constituency) as they apply caBIG® to meet today's research challenges.
Ken Quinn at Roswell Park Cancer Institute is one of 50+ caBIG® Deployment Leads. These dedicated individuals lead the charge at the Cancer Centers to make best use of caBIG® capabilities for specific research functions or all across the institution or to connect multiple institutions in a collaborative research effort.
David Paik at Stanford University School of Medicine describes the use of caBIG® in the nanotech field, in support of the pioneering work of the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer. Data sharing around nanoparticle characteristics may accelerate this discipline by obviating the need to conduct the same experiments over and over.
Martin McIntosh at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, a designated caBIG® In Silico Research Center of Excellence, illustrates the power of developing, testing, and validating hypotheses "virtually"…and shows how data-sharing via caGrid can help to power a revolutionary approach to translational research.
This month we spotlight three voices… amidst the thousands of individuals… and hundreds of institutions…who form one caBIG® community to accelerate research and improve patient outcomes.
With best regards,
Ken Buetow
