Promoting Precision Cancer Medicine through a Community-Driven Knowledgebase

Journal of Personalized Medicine

Nophar Geifman²  Izhak Haviv¹  Razelle Kurzrock³  Eitan Rubin² 

[1] Faculty of Medicine in the Galilee, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel; E-Mail:;Shraga Segal Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben Gurion University, Beersheva 8410501, Israel; E-Mail:;Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy and Division of Hematology and Oncology, Moores Cancer Center, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; E-Mail:

关键词: cancer;    case reports;    genetics;    knowledgebase;    personalized medicine;    precision medicine;   

DOI  :  10.3390/jpm4040475

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Increasing efforts are being dedicated towards improving cancer care via personalized medicine. These efforts depend to a large degree on the availability of a knowledge foundation. Unfortunately, existing knowledge linking cancer drugs and potential efficacy biomarkers is in its infancy; and where links are known, they are frequently unstructured and poorly documented. We have developed a new open-access knowledgebase for precision cancer medicine (the PCM Wiki and Knowledgebase). This knowledgebase was constructed using an innovative, two-pronged approach involving a structured knowledgebase at the back-end, and an intuitive knowledge-sharing interface and user-friendly query engine in front. The knowledgebase was seeded with several patient case reports and information was mined via text-mining and literature review by human curators. Using our novel Wiki-based platform to present and share knowledge stored in the PCM knowledgebase, users are able to suggest corrections, propose additions or point to errors in the knowledgebase. The result is a community-driven evolving knowledgebase holding integrated and consolidated knowledge of markers and indications for personalized cancer medicine. We suggest that the PCM Knowledgebase and Wiki could serve as an important tool for the advancement of clinical trials and care in the field of precision cancer medicine.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.