June is the CRUK Oxford Centre’s Big Data Month

On June 28th the Cancer Research UK Oxford Centre will be holding our annual Symposium. The field of focus for this year’s event is Cancer Big Data and in the run up to this we will be posting a series of articles highlighting Big Data and its role in Oxford’s cancer research efforts.  Big data refers to complex, heterogeneous data sets that are used to understand the aetiology and consequences of disease so that we can improve treatment and prevention strategies. Cancer Big Data research covers a spectrum of data sets, from large cohorts with small per patient datasets (e.g. national biobanks such as CKB and UKB) to smaller, data rich cohorts (e.g. S:CORT). Oxford is uniquely placed in hosting and having expertise in analysing a wide range of data and cohort types and specialise in leveraging the different approaches in order to define both public health policy and develop novel personalised medicine strategies.

Big Data research has featured in our coverage of prostate, colorectal, and oesophageal awareness months, find out more below:
Image from an endoscopy video with the detected artefacts highlighted with coloured boxes.

AI endoscopy enables 3D surface measurements of pre-cancerous conditions in oesophagus

Clinicians and engineers in Oxford have begun using artificial intelligence alongside endoscopy to get more accurate readings of the pre-cancerous condition Barrett’s oesophagus and so determine patients most at risk of developing cancer.

New prostate cancer risk tool

A new calculator has been developed by Professors Julia Hippisley-Cox and Carol Coupland to help GPs prioritise patients at high risk of prostate cancer.
An animation showing a dial with green, amber and red risk levels for myeloma

New clinical prediction tools for myeloma

Dr Constantinos Koshiaris has developed clinical prediction models for use in primary care with the aim of accelerating myeloma diagnoses.
Doctor looking at skin

Higher testosterone levels in men linked to greater melanoma risk

New research from Dr Eleanor Watts at the Nuffield Department of Population Health has found this association for the first time

Funding to improve childhood, teenage and young adult cancer detection

Dr Defne Saatci and Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox will develop risk prediction tools using the QResearch database to support the earlier detection of childhood, teenage and young adult cancer

New partnership enables access to state-of-the-art radiotherapy machine

University of Oxford, OUH and GenesisCare have partnered to provide access to a new ViewRay MRIdian machine. It is the first of its kind in the UK and will help to improve challenging cancer treatment through faster, tailored radiotherapy.

Drinking alcohol regularly increases cancer risk in Chinese populations

New research from the Nuffield Department of Population Health shows that reducing alcohol consumption in China could be an important cancer prevention strategy

New Oxford technology assesses cancer patient vulnerability to COVID-19

New research from Prof Julia Hippisley-Cox has resulted in thousands of cancer patients being given prioritised access to the COVID-19 vaccine.

The search for pancreatic cancer biomarkers

Nuffield Department of Population Health researchers are using the China Kadoorie Biobank to identify potential protein biomarkers in the blood that could be used to predict the presence or development of pancreatic cancer