Cancer Community

The GA4GH Cancer Community (GCC) serves as a forum for researchers, clinicians, and technical experts to define, discuss, and advance real-world cancer use cases through the implementation of GA4GH standards. The forum aims to:

1. foster the development of cancer-specific solutions by strengthening collaborations between cancer research tool users and developers;
2. boost opportunities for collaboration by prioritising interoperability and the sharing of cancer-related data;
3. and unite international cancer initiatives with common needs and shared goals.

The GCC hosts informational presentations about implementing GA4GH standards within cancer genomics platforms and collaborative workshops focused on specific challenges within the community. Past discussions have explored cancer genomics projects interested in data infrastructure, management, discovery, analysis, and sharing.

Under new leadership, we are in the process of surveying the community and identifying new focus areas that are representative of current community interests and needs.

Past focus areas

• Cancer variant representation pertaining to gene fusions and categorical complexity 
• Federated analysis and approaches for collecting germline variation data 
• Implementations of the Beacon standard for cancer data queries and discovery
• Knowledge sharing of resources to aid in cancer research, such as CancerModels.org and cloud platforms that enable cancer data analysis and storage
• Development of tools geared towards harmonising somatic variant calling across oncology centres like ONCOLINER