What is the NCI doing to promote sharing of biospecimens and their data by researchers as set forth in the NCI Best Practices?
One of the goals of the NCI is to break down “information silos,” making important information accessible to the entire research community. Due to the labor intensiveness of the data collection process, some investigators are not motivated to share samples and data. The NCI addressed this issue by recommending in the NCI Best Practices that, consistent with the NIH Data Sharing Policy, biospecimen resources funded by the NCI have a transparent sharing policy. (For more information on the NIH Data Sharing Policy, visit http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/data_sharing/). In some instances, investigators may not have the information technology capability to enable sharing. The NCI cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG ) team is developing tools that will enable valuable data and biospecimens to be shared for the collective good. Specifically, the caBIG is establishing an information technology (IT) infrastructure for sharing data-including biospecimen data-across a network of cancer r
