The Genomic Data Commons (GDC) is a research program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The mission of the GDC is to provide the cancer research community with a unified repository and cancer knowledge base that enables data sharing across cancer genomic studies in support of precision medicine.
The National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is the federal government's principal agency for cancer research and training. NCI’s mission is to lead, conduct, and support cancer research across the nation to advance scientific knowledge and help all people to live longer, healthier lives. NCI’s scope of work spans a broad spectrum of cancer research across a variety of disciplines and supports research training opportunities at career stages across the academic continuum.
About the GDC: Promoting Precision Medicine in Oncology
June 1, 2016
The National Cancer Institute’s (NCI’s) Genomic Data Commons (GDC) is a data sharing platform that promotes precision medicine in oncology. It is not just a database or a tool; it is an expandable knowledge network supporting the import and standardization of genomic and clinical data from cancer research programs.
The GDC contains NCI-generated data from some of the largest and most comprehensive cancer genomic datasets, including The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Therapies (TARGET). For the first time, these datasets have been processed using a common set of bioinformatics pipelines, so that the data can be directly compared.
As a growing knowledge system for cancer, the GDC also enables researchers to submit data, and the GDC processes these data using bioinformatics pipelines for aligning the data to a common reference genome and generating higher level data such as variant calls and expression quantifications. As more researchers add clinical and genomic data to the GDC, it will become an even more powerful tool for making discoveries about the molecular basis of cancer that may lead to better care for patients.
Learn more about how the GDC supports the translation of biomedical research into clinical medicine:
Find cancer research highlights and publications:
The GDC is managed by a project team comprised of scientists and specialists from NCI, contracting organizations, and members of several focused external advisory groups.
The GDC validates genomic data (BAM files) using FASTQC and Picard. For additional details, please visit: GDC Data Harmonization.
The latest news about the Genomic Data Commons (GDC):
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