PUBLIC RELEASE:
Crowdsourcing a better prostate cancer prediction tool
Knowing the likely course of cancer can influence treatment decisions. Now a new prediction model published today in Lancet Oncology offers a more accurate prognosis for a patient’s metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. The approach was as novel as the result – while researchers commonly work in small groups, intentionally isolating their data, the current study embraces the call in Joe Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot” to open their question and their data, collecting previously published clinical trial data and calling for worldwide collaboration to evaluate its predictive power. That is, researchers crowdsourced the question of prostate cancer prognosis, eventually involving over 550 international researchers and resulting in 50 computational models from 50 different teams. The approach was intentionally controversial.
Results of the Prostate Cancer DREAM Challenge manuscript, Prediction of overall survival for patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer: development of a prognostic model through a crowdsourced challenge with open clinical trial data, were published in Lancet Oncology.
To find out more about the Challenge, visit the Prostate Cancer DREAM Challenge on Synapse.