AstraZeneca hopes to harness the open source platform of the DREAM challenge, releasing preclinical data to discover synergistic cancer drug combinations.
An open science collaboration among academic research institutes, the public sector, and private companies has been in the works since 2006 and now the drug manufacturer AstraZeneca has decided to join the bandwagon. AstraZeneca hopes to harness the open source platform of the DREAM challenge, releasing preclinical data on drugs developed by the company, to discover synergistic cancer drug combinations.
Developed by IBM researcher Gustavo Stolovitzky, PhD, and Columbia University researcher Andrea Califano, PhD, the program has blossomed with multiple cross-collaborative projects across 50 different institutions. About 2 years back, in February 2013, DREAM joined hands with Sage Bionetworks, a non-profit research organization that believes in open sharing of complex biological data, especially big data, to accelerate discovery. DREAM Challenges have touched a variety of healthcare issues, from prostate cancer to odor detection to protein interaction networks.
AstraZeneca now plans to share data on approximately 11,500 anticancer drug combinations that the company has tested—combinations that could hypothetically overcome innate and acquired tumor drug resistance. This would be cell viability data on 118 drugs in 85 cancer cell lines (mainly colon, prostate, lung, and breast). The partnership also includes patient genomic data, primarily gene expression, mutations (whole exome), copy-number alterations, and methylation data, shared by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. The objective, according to the project overview, is to explore fundamental traits that underlie effective combination treatments and synergistic drug behavior using baseline genomic data that has been gathered pretreatment.
Winning predictions will be submitted for publication in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
What Mass General Brigham Is Doing to Combat Prostate Cancer Disparities Among Men of Color
May 5th 2024Quoc-Dien Trinh, MD, MBA, chief of urology at Brigham & Women's Faulkner Hospital, highlighted successful efforts to improve prostate cancer care access for underserved communities in Massachusetts.
Read More
Examining Low-Value Cancer Care Trends Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
April 25th 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with the authors of a study published in the April 2024 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® about their findings on the rates of low-value cancer care services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Listen
AUA Posters Highlight Racial Gaps in PSA Screening, Prostate Cancer Risk
May 4th 2024Speakers discussed the disparities in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening rates among different racial groups and explored the potential of free PSA percentage as a predictive marker for future prostate cancer risk.
Read More