BioMed Central Blog

BioMed Central at NCRI 2009 and Sage bionetworks

Several members of the BioMed Central Editorial team had the pleasure of attending the annual conference held by the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) in Birminham UK, October 4-7th, 2009, and of meeting up with several Editorial Board members while there.  The conference and the concurrent workshop about Sage bionetworks were stimulating events, and the discussions around the issue of raw data depositon and publication will continue to be at the forefront of public attention.

The NCRI conference brings together leading international experts and showcases the best of UK research in cancer.  This year’s program was very stimulating and included talks on different aspects of translational research, drug discovery, and clinical, epidemiological and therapy research in cancer, reflecting the evolving integrated multi-disciplinary culture of cancer research both in the UK and world-wide. 

As one might expect, biomarkers and personalised medicine were two hot topics that were high on the agenda at the conference. Sunday evening, Paul Workman gave an extremely interesting plenary talk on expanding the ‘druggable cancer genome’, outlining the challenges of defining gene networks and developing relevant drugs and their companion biomarkers.  These issues are critical for the development and testing of new drug therapies as we move towards personalised, systems-based molecular cancer treatment. 

Ian Tannock discussed the design of clinical trials, analysis and reporting.  He highlighted the pitfalls of using surrogate end-points and emphasised the finer points of using quality of life as a necessary end-point.  His call for increased collaborative research in oncology with the developing world, as well as more of a balance in clinical trials to better reflect the burden of cancer worldwide was met with general support.  As well, the clinical trials showcase provided late-breaking news and up-to-date information, including an update of the COIN trial and a call to discontinue measuring CA125 as part of routine follow-up in relapsed ovarian cancer patients.

The Editorial Team was able to meet up with several Editorial Advisors and Associate Editors for BMC Cancer to discuss the progress of the journal as well as future developments. Data publication was a key subject of our discussions - we continued discussions with Andrew Vickers on the important issue of  the deposition (and publication) of raw data from clinical trials. This is an area receiving much attention at the moment (for example:http://www.trialsjournal.com/content/10/1/17). Concurrently, in another part of Birmingham, discussions were being held about Sage bionetworks - the new, not-for-profit organization established earlier this year to build and support an open access platform and databases for building new dynamic disease models.

Both discussions focussed on the fact that openly depositing and publishing raw data will make research on the efficacy of cancer drugs (among many research topics) much more efficient. While there are many challenges to overcome, the issue of raw data deposition and publication will continue to be a key focus for providers of scientific information in the near future. 

If you are interested in keeping abreast of developments in clinical and translational medical research, why not sign up for article alerts for BMC Medicine and BMC Cancer? 

Posted by Robin Cassady-Cain at 16:36    Comments (0)