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NCI, NVIDIA Providing $2M for Omics-based Cancer Data Research

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The National Cancer Institute's Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) and the NVIDIA Foundation on Wednesday announced that they will provide up to $2 million in funding for the development of omics-based, data-intensive scientific tools to treat cancer.

CPTAC said it anticipates funding up to three awards totaling $1.8 million, while NVIDIA will make one award in the amount of $200,000 for projects aimed at creating tools that will enable the mining and interpretation of large-scale publicly available omics datasets. CPTAC and NVIDIA noted three research areas of interest, including the development of computational tools that use datasets to elucidate cancer biology and to advance the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of cancer.

The organizations also are seeking projects to integrate new computational omics analysis methods into existing genomic data analysis pipelines to advance cancer biology knowledge and enable researchers to leverage omics advancements in cancer diagnosis and treatment, CPTAC and NVIDIA said.

Also of interest are efforts to develop new multi-omic simulation and/or visualization techniques that make computational biology accessible to researchers who have no programming experience.

The projects will use datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas and CPTAC, as well as other publicly available omics datasets. Proposals will be assessed based on whether they advance new approaches or apply new insights "through parallel and/or visual computing in the area of computational omics;" whether the project will be used by or benefit multiple researchers and motivate new innovations; and whether the work leverages computational methods to solve a specific problem in computational omics, resulting in a "substantial impact" in cancer research.

Other criteria for funding include whether a project defines clear goals and a milestone-based plan for completion within a two-year time frame, and whether the work identifies obstacles and reasonable approaches to overcome them.

Applications are due Oct. 8.

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