OnCo
ideasIdea

Pool every multi-sample tumour genome into one open evolution atlas

Several big projects have sequenced the same tumours at different times and places, but their data sit apart. Bringing them together with common analysis would show general rules of how cancers evolve.

TRACERx, PEACE, Hartwig, PCAWG and dozens of institutional cohorts hold multi-region or longitudinal genomes with treatment history, each analysed with different phylogeny tools. A federated atlas with a common clonal-reconstruction pipeline, harmonised treatment annotations and an open query interface would allow questions such as which drivers are always truncal, which resistance routes are convergent, and how fast clones expand under each drug.

Hypothesis
Harmonised analysis of over 5,000 multi-sample cases identifies at least five recurrent, treatment-specific evolutionary rules that individual cohorts lacked the power to detect and that predict outcome in held-out data.
Rationale
Single-timepoint atlases (TCGA, GENIE) changed the field; the longitudinal equivalent does not exist. Federated analysis avoids the consent and jurisdiction barriers of pooling raw data.
What would test it
Fund a two-year harmonisation effort across five consortia with a common pipeline; deliverable is a public query portal and a first analysis paper with pre-registered hypotheses.
Maturity
preclinical evidence
Who has to act
data
Cost to try
Medium ($1M to $50M)
Years to first evidence
3
Bottlenecks it attacks
  • Tumour heterogeneity and clonal evolution · A tumour is many tumours. Treatments that kill most cells leave the rest to grow back, changed.
  • Data silos · Records, scans, genomes and outcomes sit in separate systems that cannot talk. Every patient's experience is lost to the next.

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