Bioinformatics Shared Resource

Overview

Leadership:

William Barry, PhD
919-681-5047
bill.barry@duke.edu

Location: 702 Hock Plaza

The Bioinformatics Shared Resource, a core function of Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center (DCCC), supports the research needs of DCCC investigators (and secondarily, other Duke investigators) with respect to bioinformatics and complex data management and integration. Its mission is to provide a high-quality, service-oriented, coordinated, bioinformatics infrastructure for DCCC researchers, one which increases collaborations across DCCC programs and between DCCC and other Duke programs. This core provides resources to DCCC programs and individual laboratories, coordinates institutional efforts in bioinformatics, helps drive the development of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors within Duke, and creates synergy between scientific and clinical groups. Services include state-of-the-art software to support a full range of research involving “-omics” data, consultation and programming to assist with study design and analysis, CPU time for computationally intensive calculations, data storage, and training. The Resource coordinates its activities and directions closely with those of caBIG and NCI initiatives in integrative research.
    
The importance of the Bioinformatics Shared Resource within DCCC and at Duke has amplified with the explosion of genomic, proteomic, metabolomic, and other high-throughput data types; these data carry vast potential utility for clinical and translational research, especially when combined with clinical, imaging, and other scientific data. Initially, this core focused on supporting DCCC studies involving DNA sequence and microarray gene expression data; we developed software and tools for visualization, data mining, and annotation, first for individual research projects and then extrapolated for the general needs of genomics studies. Using microarray data as a starting point in a series of trials, we have honed our ability to integrate complex “-omic” data into clinical trials. We have also developed caBIG infrastructure and tools, and controlled vocabularies. These capabilities, and our team which now possesses requisite skills and experience, position us at the center of a distributed knowledge transfer system that links the DCCC, Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Shared Resources, and Duke Translational Medicine Institute, and the caBIG infrastructure and National Bioinformatics Strategy. We have strengthened our role with each of these entities. The Bioinformatics Shared Resource functions as a service and knowledge vector through which we are transferring lessons learned in bioinformatics and “-omic” sciences, and the benefits of new technological capabilities, to users across DCCC. Investigators spanning scientific disciplines that use high-dimensional bioinformatics data (e.g., genomics, metabolomics, proteomics) can leverage our expertise to increase the quality and efficiency of complex, integrative, collaborative cancer research.