Prescription for Success

"She said that a classmate of hers had had cancer, and got treated here, and now was better," he remembers. "And so she thought it was important to do this [fundraising]."

Quackenbush was touched by her efforts, which mirrored his own reasons for joining Dana-Farber—because they truly can make a difference in the lives of cancer patients.

As a researcher, Quackenbush is faced daily with a disturbing fact that while cancer mortality rates are declining among Americans, the disease remains devastating; according to the National Cancer Institute, cancer claims over 1,500 lives daily in the US, including children's lives. Quackenbush has dedicated his work to reversing this trend, "One of the keys [in fighting and treating cancer] is creating new methods and applications that address critical needs, tools that hone our ability to make the most of our available resources."

It was Quackenbush's passion for developing new approaches to managing medical information, combined with Dana-Farber's world-renowned, leadership position in innovative, cancer treatment that made Dana-Farber a natural fit for a $1 million Oracle Commitment Grant. This grant allows the two industry leaders to join forces in an ambitious effort to merge genomic information with clinical data as a step toward improving cancer diagnosis and individualizing treatment for patients. The Oracle grant will fund database administrator and software engineer positions on Dr. Quackenbush's team for the next two years. In addition, Oracle will contribute consulting expertise. Quackenbush said that the partnership will serve as a "cornerstone" of a new Center for Computational Cancer Biology being created at Dana-Farber under its recently implemented strategic plan.

Cancer today is viewed as a disease of genes and gene "pathways," or molecular connections, linking the thousands of genes in a cell. Most cancers develop because altered or damaged genes lead to abnormal behavior of cells, such as out-of-control growth and division.

Quackenbush, who came to Dana-Farber in 2005, together with his team has developed a series of freely available, Web-globally accessible databases and software tools that are intended to identify genes and gene functions for use in scientific discovery. With the help of Oracle's technology, the scientists want to integrate these databases with information from leading-edge cancer studies at Dana-Farber and data obtained using advanced technologies to examine samples of patient tissue. Ultimately, the goal is to help predict the best course of cancer treatment and to better understand the mechanisms responsible for disease development and progression.

"We'd like to be able to do things like predict outcome, response to therapy, and identify people who are at risk for recurrence," says Quackenbush. "One of the things that excites me about this grant is the opportunity to combine our expertise in cancer research with Oracle's experience with building data warehouses, mining large data sets in innovative ways, and maintaining data security and confidentiality."

Quackenbush says that Oracle's grant will take this kind of information sharing to the next level. "Increasingly, scientists are gathering vast amounts of data about the genetic underpinnings of disease," says Quackenbush. "Anything we can do to bring this information together and mine it effectively is going to have great potential for impacting the way we treat and manage disease."

Oracle's partnership with Dana-Farber is an important part of Oracle's Commitment, the company's global efforts to advance education, promote diversity, enrich the life of communities, and protect the environment.