Use-case Driven Evaluation of Open Databases for Pediatric Cancer Research

Abstract

A plethora of Web resources are available offering information on clinical, pre-clinical, genomic and theoretical aspects of cancer, including not only the comprehensive cancer projects as ICGC and TCGA, but also less-known and more specialized projects on pediatric diseases such as PCGP. However, in case of data on childhood cancer there is very little information openly available. Several web-based resources and tools offer general biomedical data which are not purpose-built, for neither pediatric nor cancer analysis. Additionally, many Web resources on cancer focus on incidence data and statistical social characteristics as well as self-regulating communities.

Web resources on specific pediatric cancers are less abundant and less-known compared to those offering adult cancer research data. Meanwhile, current efforts of ongoing pediatric data collection and Pan-Cancer projects indicate future opportunities for childhood cancer research, that is greatly needed for both fundamental as well as clinical research.

Acknowledgements

We thank A. Schlagenhauf and P. Ambros for revising the manuscript. We dedicate our work in memoriam to our family members and friends we have lost. If we may contribute even tiny steps to help to save lives in the future our mission was worth our passion, enthusiasm and effort. Please visit our project homepage at: https://hci-kdd.org/project/tugrovis.