Scientists from five leading research institutes in Heidelberg are taking part in the ambitious project: From the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ), the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), Heidelberg University and the University Hospitals and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). In addition, scientists from D-sseldorf University Hospitals and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin have taken on tasks within the network project.
Data Management in the Cancer Genome Project: Not an Easy Task
An extraordinary challenge is the analysis and storage of the gigantic mass of data that are produced in the course of the International Cancer Genome Project. The genome of a cell is composed of about three billion building blocks, which are captured up to 30 times in the various analyses in order to verify results. All data of the German ICGC projects will be joined together by Professor Roland Eils, the network's deputy coordinator. To this end, Eils, who heads the Theoretical Bioinformatics Division of DKFZ, is building one of the world's largest data storage units for life sciences at the BioQuant Center of Heidelberg University. Funds of several million euros are provided for this by the Federal Government and the State of Baden-W-rttemberg. This facility will have a storage capacity of several petabytes - a petabyte is equal to one million gigabytes - a one with fifteen zeroes after it!
Network coordinator Peter Lichter is convinced that the effort is worth it: "Our own preliminary work and the excellent networking of clinical practice and research here in Heidelberg let us expect rapid results, particularly for brain tumors in children, which might bring fundamental improvements to the treatment of the little patients."
Source: Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres