Hopefully you read my earlier blog on ISPNO, the International Society of Pediatric-Neuro–Oncology. I wrote that several doctors spoke on how fundamental the need for tissue is for their cancer research. Swifty’s Post Mortem Tissue donation program was seen as an excellent way to facilitate getting tissue to the labs where it is needed.
“Big data” was the other catchphrase of the conference. With technological breakthroughs and the frequent genomic sequencing of tumors, massive amounts of data is being generated in the pediatric cancer world, that has to be stored, organized and easily queried. Thankfully, the folks at the Children’s Brain Tumor Tissue Consortium (CBTTC) have developed a cloud-based platform for collaboratively accessing, sharing and analyzing pediatric cancer data.
The platform is called CAVATICA and all you Charlotte’s Web fans will love that they chose that name. As you children lit lovers know, Cavatica was Charlotte’s last name. What makes it an awesome name for this platform is that just as Charlotte worked to save the vulnerable pig, Wilbur, the researchers using CAVATICA are working to save the most vulnerable cancer patients, our children. Plus the image of a web is the perfect image for the collaboration required of doctors, researchers, drug companies, federal government, and family foundations for a cure to be found.
Since Swifty’s Post Mortem Tissue Donation is stored at the bio-respository connected to CAVATICA, all the tissue donated and the research associated with those donations is available to researchers all over the world…. Making the web bigger and bigger.
