Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Comment
  • Published:

Roadmap for a European cancer data management and precision medicine infrastructure

Nature Cancer volume 5, pages 367–372 (2024)Cite this article

Subjects

Gold-standard cancer data management is pivotal to enable precision medicine for European citizens. Achieving this goal relies on key elements: adopting standardized data formats, ensuring robust data privacy, educating professionals about the infrastructure’s benefits and leveraging cutting-edge technologies to transform cancer care.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Health ‘data journey’ between clinical decision-making and translational research, and current challenges associated with it.
Fig. 2: ELIXIR’s joint effort with other human data initiatives.

References

  1. Commission to the European Parliament and the Council. Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan (EU, 2021); https://health.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-02/eu_cancer-plan_en_0.pdf

  2. Pita Barros, P. et al. Conquering cancer: mission possible (European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, 2020); https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/045403

  3. Eggermont, A. M. et al. Mol. Oncol. 13, 521–527 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  4. O’Doherty, K. C. et al. Nat. Genet. 53, 2–8 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  5. Freeberg, M. A. et al. Nucleic Acids Res. 50, D980–D987 (2022).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Rehm, H. L. et al. Cell Genom. 1, 100029 (2021).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  7. Eiss, R. Nature 584, 498–499 (2020).

    Article  ADS  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. PHG Foundation. The GDPR and genomic data (2020); https://www.phgfoundation.org/report/the-gdpr-and-genomic-data

  9. Jiang, P. et al. Nat. Rev. Cancer 22, 625–639 (2022).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  10. Deans, A. R. et al. PLoS Biol. 13, e1002033 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  11. Kush, R. D. et al. J. Biomed. Informat. 107, 103421 (2020).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Ngiam, K. Y. & Khor, W. Lancet Oncol. 20, e262–e273 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Mehrabi, N., Morstatter, F., Saxena, N., Lerman, K. & Galstyan, A. ACM Comput. Surv. 54, 1–35 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank the members of the ELIXIR Cancer Data Focus Group (see Supplementary Note) for contributions to this work.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Gary Saunders

    Present address: EATRIS-ERIC, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

  2. These authors contributed equally: Macha Nikolski, Eivind Hovig, Fatima Al-Shahrour.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bordeaux, CNRS–IBGC, UMR 5095, Bordeaux, France

    Macha Nikolski

  2. University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux Bioinformatics Center CBiB, Bordeaux, France

    Macha Nikolski

  3. Centre for Bioinformatics, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Eivind Hovig

  4. Department of Tumor Biology, Institute for Cancer Research, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway

    Eivind Hovig

  5. Bioinformatics Unit, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), Madrid, Spain

    Fatima Al-Shahrour

  6. ELIXIR Hub, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, UK

    Niklas Blomberg, Serena Scollen & Gary Saunders

  7. Life Sciences Department, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Spain

    Alfonso Valencia

  8. ICREA, Barcelona, Spain

    Alfonso Valencia

Authors
  1. Macha Nikolski
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Eivind Hovig
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Fatima Al-Shahrour
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Niklas Blomberg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Serena Scollen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Alfonso Valencia
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Gary Saunders
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Macha Nikolski.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Note

ELIXIR Cancer Data Focus Group author list.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Nikolski, M., Hovig, E., Al-Shahrour, F. et al. Roadmap for a European cancer data management and precision medicine infrastructure. Nat Cancer 5, 367–372 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43018-023-00717-6

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43018-023-00717-6

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing: Cancer

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Cancer newsletter — what matters in cancer research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get what matters in cancer research, free to your inbox weekly. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Cancer