The hereditary information carried by each living thing is its genome. Stored in the form of the DNA sequences of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, between 1 and 5% of the genome sequence consists in genes. These genes contain instruction sets for small protein machines that accomplish specific tasks and ultimately determine the organism's shape, size, behavior, lifespan and disease susceptibility. Determining the genome sequence of an organism is now straightforward. But understanding which genes are responsible for the unique characteristics of the organism remains challenging. This is due in particular to the difficulty of correctly finding the genes in the genome and determining which parts of their sequence encode proteins. Indeed, automatic gene identification software performs poorly, thus evidence for each potential gene model needs to be visually inspected and corrected. Thus preparing the data for even a small research project can take months. Luckily there is a solution. Thousands of members of the general public have used the internet to contribute their time to help scientific projects such as GalaxyZoo and FoldIt, be it out of curiosity, desire to help the greater good, gain peer recognition or simply to have fun. Results of their contributions include the identification of previously unknown galaxy types and determination of the 3D structures of AIDS proteins. The proposed project uses a similar approach to encourage members of the general public to help identify genes in the genome and refine their borders. We are constructing a game in which contributors use pattern recognition skills to improve gene models. Contributors will be able to choose to focus their efforts on particular species (e.g.: ants, humans, elephants) or research topics (e.g.: cancer, immunity, longevity, taste or odor perception, behavior). They will earn points and thus peer recognition for their contribtutions, and may be acknowledged in scientific publications or even financially compensated. This project will thus allow members of the general public to have fun while helping to make the world a better place and facilitate scientific discovery.

We propose to create the EUropean-CANadian Cancer network (EUCANCan), a federated infrastructure whose mission is to enable Personalized Medicine in Oncology by promoting the generation and sharing of harmonized genomic and phenotypic data. EUCANCan builds on work performed by members of the consortium and related projects to align and interconnect existing European and Canadian infrastructures for the analysis and management of genomic oncology data. The EUCANCan network will be composed of reference nodes in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Heidelberg, Paris and Toronto which have established strong research and clinical programs in the field of genomic oncology. These reference nodes will work together in an interoperable fashion to provide the genomic oncology community with a uniform computing environment for the processing, harmonization and secure sharing of cancer genome and phenome data in the context of clinical research, enabling the discovery of clinically-relevant patterns of variation in the cancer genome such as biomarkers predictive of therapeutic response. The infrastructure will also provide a proving ground for federated genome analysis systems that may one day be integrated into national and regional healthcare systems. EUCANCan’s objectives are: (1) harmonise protocols for the identification and interpretation of germline and somatic variation profiles within cancer genomes; (2) generate strategies for the flow, management, storage and distribution of data within and across EUCANCan nodes; (3) define community standards for data elements, types and formats; (4) develop an open and accessible data portals for the searching and download of EUCANCan data; and (5) define an appropriate ethical and legal frame to ensure the secure sharing of protected individual genomic and phenotypic data across countries.

The EUbOPEN partnership of excellence will aim to generate the largest freely available set of high-quality chemical inhibitors for human proteins. These compounds will include chemical probes for solute carriers (SLCs), E3-ubiquitin ligases (E3s) and other proteins, and a chemogenomic library (CGL) of 3000-5000 compounds covering one third of the druggable genome. All compounds in the sets will be comprehensively characterised defining their selectivity, potency and cellular activity. The compounds will be annotated with a series of established and novel biochemical and cell-based assays, including many derived from primary patient cells. Diseases of particular focus will be inflammatory bowel disease, cancer and neurodegeneration. EUbOPEN partners have proven track records leading large international open science projects, developing unencumbered key reagents, and exploring new target areas. A strong commitment to open data and open science will accelerate the dissemination of knowledge and reagents as well as mitigate ethical issues that might arise by working with patient-derived cells. EUbOPEN will partner extensively with other large projects (e.g. ReSOLUTE, Illuminating the Druggable Genome) to minimize duplication of effort and to maximize global coordination. EUbOPEN will provide via the EFPIA partners the public access to industry’s deep medicinal chemistry skills. Sustainability of the project’s resources will be ensured through already established partnerships with chemical vendors and cheminformatics/database providers, which will ensure the long-term availability of the new chemical tool sets, all associated profiling data and established protocols. The EUbOPEN project will form the foundation for future efforts to generate chemical modulators for the entire druggable genome and will develop new technologies significantly shortening hit and lead identification processes.