Cancer research generates a wide range of information, from genomic data about individual tumors to patients’ clinical histories to proteomic and imaging data. NCI’s infographic of the NCI Cancer Research Data Ecosystem highlights the many types of cancer research data, the variety of ways it’s collected, and current and future NCI resources for discovering it. To help you, the Scientific Library at NCI at Frederick has compiled a list of websites related to Research Data Resources, including an overview of NCI data resources.
NCI Data Resources
Repositories and portals where users can discover NCI-funded research data include:
- Cancer Research Data Commons – A virtual, expandable infrastructure that provides access to data from NCI programs such as The Cancer Genome Atlas and its pediatric counterpart, Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments; the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium; the Genomic Data Commons; NCI Cloud Resources; and the Proteomic Data Commons.
- Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives Data Coordinating Center – A flexible data coordination framework housing multiple types of biological data. This assay-agnostic data sharing resource provides a mechanism for researchers using novel or nonstandard technologies to fulfill data sharing requirements.
- NCI Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) Data Portal – A way to explore proteomic data sets from CPTAC studies since 2011 as well as some external studies. Users can search through over 1,600 available data sets at the CPTAC Query Page or explore CPTAC data in the NCI Proteomic Data Commons.
- NCI Genomic Data Commons – A unified data repository that lets the research community share data across cancer genomic studies. Users may need to apply for access to controlled data on the Genomic Data Commons. Learn more about obtaining access to controlled data.
- Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)*Explorer – A place to explore, visualize, and download statistical data for various cancer sites by gender, race, calendar year, and age.
- The Cancer Imaging Archive – This database de-identifies and hosts a large archive of medical images of cancer that are accessible for public download.
Other Resources for Finding Cancer Research Data
Researchers can find a list of more than 80 data sets and databases related to cancer research at the NCI Resources for Researchers website. The National Institutes of Health provides tables of open-domain-specific data sharing repositories and other data resources where users can sort by the “ICO” column to view NCI-related repositories or keyword-search the tables for repositories related to cancer and oncology.
Other repositories related to cancer research data can be found through the Registry of Research Data Repositories (Re3Data) by searching for keywords like cancer, tumor, or oncology.
Finally, check the Sharing Tools and Resources (STAR) page for data sharing and analysis tools developed by researchers at the National Cancer Institute at Frederick and Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research.