Pre-register for the National Center for Toxicological Research and the precisionFDA’s “Indel Calling from Oncopanel Sequencing Data Challenge” before May 2, 2022! Selected participants will be publicly recognized and invited to contribute to a scientific manuscript and a “Top Performer Webinar” that will be open to the public.

In this challenge, participants will develop, validate, and benchmark indel-calling pipelines to identify indels (i.e., insertions/deletions in a genome) in oncopanel sequencing datasets generated by an FDA oncopanel sequencing working group. Participants will be provided two sets of oncopanel sequencing data, from which they will develop indel-calling pipelines optimized for either or both datasets (Oncopanel A and Oncopanel B). 

The general timeline begins with the Phase 1 submission period (May 2–July 8, 2022) and moves on to Optional Phase 2 (July 11–26, 2022). Phase winners will be announced in late August. 

Substantial genetic variation involving indels in the cancer genome have been observed, particularly in the coding region where they can disrupt protein coding and change protein function. Because indels have not been studied as deeply or thoroughly as single nucleotide variants, the tools for indel-calling must be rigorously evaluated and optimized.