Enabling effective curation of cancer biomarker research data

The dramatic increase in data in the area of cancer research has elevated the importance of effectively managing the quality and consistency of research results from multiple providers. The U.S. National Cancer Institute´s Early Detection Research Network (EDRN) is a prime example of a virtual organization, sponsoring distributed, collaborative work at dozens of institutions around the country. As part of a comprehensive informatics infrastructure, The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in collaboration with Dartmouth Medical School, has developed a web application for the curation of cancer biomarker research results. In this paper, we describe and evaluate the application in the context of the EDRN content management process, and detail our experience using the tool in an operational environment to capture and annotate biomarker research data generated by the EDRN.