NCI’s Childhood Cancer Data Initiative (CCDI) has launched a new data catalog listing more than 70 childhood cancer data resources.

The CCDI Childhood Cancer Data Catalog provides summaries of NCI and external resources from around the world representing more than 275,000 samples through:

• programs collecting data (such as NCI’s Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments [TARGET]).
• repositories storing data (such as NCI’s Genomic Data Commons).
• Data catalogs (such as the clinical trials summaries from the Children’s Oncology Group).

An example of the kind of summary information that can be found on the data set page.

The types and kinds of data vary between resources. So far, the catalog includes genomic, proteomic, medical imaging, and clinical trial data collections. Though researchers won’t be able to download raw data from the catalog itself, each listing provides a link to the resource, an overview of the data collection, available analysis tools to work with the data, and a point of contact for additional questions.

The need for a comprehensive catalog of childhood cancer data resources was recognized in the early planning of the CCDI. In a 2020 report from the Board of Scientific Advisors on the CCDI, members highlighted that, “unfortunately, there is no registry or catalog of existing childhood/[adolescent and young adult] AYA cancer data or data repositories, and there is little to no standardization among the existing databases.”

Through the catalog and other efforts (such as the CCDI Molecular Characterization Initiative and the National Childhood Cancer Registry), CCDI continues to make progress towards a childhood cancer data ecosystem and to making childhood cancer data more shareable across the community. “The catalog serves the needs of the childhood cancer communities by facilitating easier access to a more complete corpus of relevant scientific data,” explained Dr. Subashini Jagu, an NCI CBIIT staff member coordinating the development of the project. “By helping researchers to identify existing resources and find relevant data, we can more efficiently accelerate childhood cancer research.”