ICGA: biggest breakthrough?

ICGA (Indian Cancer Genome Atlas) might be the next biggest thing in India's modern medicine. It is going to be the biggest Multi-omics(molecular biology of DNA, RNA, Proteins and various molecules) opensource database for various cancer profiles(types and subtypes of cancers) of Indian cancer patients. 

This database would contain deidentified data of cancer patients from various demographic regions of India which would be representative of the entire Indian Population. It would allow scientists across India to collaborate and drive translative research on cancer treatment.

source: icga.in

“Historically, cancer treatments in India have been based on Western data sets. However, cancers in Indian patients can differ significantly at the molecular level” said Shekhar Mande, former Director-General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). If we break down this sentence we realise most of the drug development clinical trials are setup in western countries(hence based on western population/ data set) and the number of drug development clinical trials in India is significantly low. As there are various differences at molecular level between populations of various ethnic groups, development of such a data set exclusive to Indian population and openly sharing the data set would empower researchers, clinicians, and innovators to collaborate, explore new frontiers, and drive transformative breakthroughs in cancer treatment.

In 2020 reported number of breast cancer cases surpassed the number of lung cancer cases to become most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide. The mortality rate of breast cancer diagnosed patients in India is on the rise due to various socio-economic barriers(in western countries even though the number of diagnosed cases is on the rise the mortality rate is going down). As its first step ICGA compiled and released the data set of 50 breast cancer patients and plans to expand it to over 500 breast cancer cases and various cancer profiles in the coming years.

I tried to access the data set from their website https://www.icga.in/ but I was not able access the data set. I e-mailed them to findout about the accessibility of the data set and from the reply I received it seems like they are yet to design an interface to make the data set accessible to everyone.

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PS: Emerging use of Artificial Intelligence in medicine seems optimistic for now(until a mad scientist decides to screw up everything). lets hope for the best :fingers crossed: .

Update: 15th october 2024

Received an email from ICGA regarding data access. The data is open source(meaning anyone can access the data for free) but not everyone will be able to access the data. This data is opensource for only researchers and scientists who are working on cancer related research/ studies. 

Researchers need to apply for data access for stage 1 screening with a research proposal (what you will be doing with the accessed data) and upon acceptance in stage 1 you will need to upload certain documents like Ethics Commitee approval, undertaking by researchers, etc and then you will be able to access the data. for more information visit https://www.icga.in/icga-portal/ .

email regarding data access applications update