The NCI Genomic Data Commons (GDC) has released data from two landmark studies investigating the potential health effects of exposure to ionizing radiation from the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine. The teams published their findings earlier this year, just days before the 35^th anniversary of the disaster.

Interested researchers must first request access to explore the data from both studies, including: 

• 339 cases from “The Ukrainian National Research Center for Radiation Medicine Trio Study” (TRIO-CRU; phs001163). This study found no evidence that radiation exposure to parents resulted in new genetic changes being passed from parent to child.
• 439 cases from the “Radiation-related Genomic Profile of Papillary Thyroid Cancer after the Chernobyl Accident" (REBC-THYR; phs001134) which documented the genetic changes in the tumors of people who developed thyroid cancer after being exposed as children or fetuses to the radiation released by the accident.

This data set release also adds new or updated data to existing projects in the GDC, including:

• 31 new cases from NCI’s Cancer Model Development for the Human Cancer Model Initiative (HCMI-CMDC; phs001486)
• new RNA-seq and miRNA-seq data for acute myeloid leukemia studies from Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments Program (TARGET-AML; phs000218)
• updated RNA-seq data, using an updated pipeline, has been added to testicular germ cell tumors from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA-TGCT; phs000178)

In addition to data from these new and updated studies, two new data types, including methylation beta values processed using the Sensible Step-wise Analysis of Methylation (SeSAMe) data method, have been added to the GDC. The full list of changes can also be reviewed in GDC’s Data Release Notes. 

As a component of the NCI Cancer Research Data Commons, the GDC allows researchers to explore the data directly through each data portal or access the data via one of NCI’s Cloud Resources.