WIKIMEDIA, W.REBELSeveral open-source biomedical challenges are pitting groups of researchers against each other in the name of science. The Big Data computational challenges, for example, hosted by Sage Bionetworks and DREAM (Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods), are sharing genomic and clinical data, from which researchers are devising models to predict outcome and survival. The models, which are also shared among challenge contestants, are then vetted against real-life survival data and scored based on the accuracy of their predictions.
“A tsunami of omics data have shown us that many diseases we thought were quite simple are increasingly complex with multiple sub-types,” Sage-cofounder Stephen Friend told The Scientist. “Meshing these data with clinical outcomes to develop predictors of who is likely to respond to therapy or who is likely to have aggressive disease is an audaciously large problem that necessitates working off of each other's insights. This just simply cannot be done by one lone scientist.”
WIKIPEDIA, M EICKMANNStructural analyses of current strains of H5N1 and H7N9 avian influenza suggest that just one mutation could be enough to render the viruses transmissible between humans. Though there have been no definitive cases of human-to-human transmission yet, the deadly nature of infections acquired from birds has many fearing a possible pandemic. Understanding how the viruses might evolve to become contagious should help public health officials prepare for such an outbreak.
“These viruses are rapidly evolving and our stockpiles of vaccine are largely based on outdated strains,” said Ram Sasisekharan of the Massachusetts Institute of ...
