In Silico Research Centers of Excellence (ISRCE)
In silico, or bioinformatics-driven research, represents an opportunity for researchers to test a hypothesis virtually as a precursor to laboratory experiments. Such work is often less costly than traditional methods of investigation and can extend the life of previously gathered data.
To expand the use of these techniques, the NCI recently awarded grants to five institutions, identifying them as In Silico Research Centers of Excellence (ISRCE), to support research that uses data-mining and other in silico methods to advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer.
The participating institutions work with the caBIG® program to establish common sets of services, data sources, workflows, vocabularies, data elements, and data models to enhance their research. Additionally, once research investigations are completed, all of the data compiled and tools created by each center will be published for public use.
National Consortium and Participating Centers
The ISRCE are organized into a national consortium that promotes collaboration amongst the centers, and between the centers and the cancer research community. There are currently six institutions participating in the ISRCE:
In addition to generating and publishing novel scientific findings obtained through the use of caBIG® and other bioinformatics tools, it is expected that new workflows and new tools to utilize these publicly available data stores will be developed by the ISRCEs.
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