Editorial
Editorial
Welcome to this second edition of the ACGT Newsletter!
The recognition that clinico-genomic trials are part of the critical path has turned the spotlight on this aspect of drug development which for ACGT means that a very important opportunity exists to make an impact in an area of significant unmet needs.
Some of these needs especially in the area of trials that target child populations are addressed by the development of a European register of clinical trials in children. As reported in the Clinical Trials News section, the goal of these initiatives is treatment optimization and ultimately better therapies in Paediatrics. Still, this is only one aspect of the broader task of supporting clinico-genomic trials and ACGT is looking to create a host of tools that can be integrated in an easy to use environment. In the Grid News section we report on the latest features of Gridge Resource Management, an open source meta-scheduling system which allows developers to build and deploy resource management systems for large scale distributed computing infrastructures.
There is also some exciting news in terms of ACGT software deliverables. In the products section, the team at Fraunhofer presents the latest on GridR, an ACGT-grid enabled version of the well know statistical analysis package R. In the data protection area, we consider the question of whether patients want feedback of data from clinico-genomic research. The question of individual donor feedback (IDF) is certainly complex and the group at Hannover University will be analysing their findings in this and future editions.
The feature article of this edition discusses many of the challenges and requirements in the emerging field of Molecular Medicine and shows how many of these will eventually be served by the solutions methodologies and data exchange standards adopted by ACGT.
ACGT is certainly progressing and what better proof than a growing ?ACGT member family?? EORTC (the European Organization Cancer) is our newest member and will be joining the consortium in order to contribute its experience in clinical trials needs and in the design of effective supporting infrastructures.
We hope that you will find this second issue of the ACGT newsletter interesting and look forward to welcoming you too as an active member of the growing ACGT community!