Bioinformatics Grid (BIG)

The mission of the eye cancer bioinformatics grid is to provide an infrastructure for sharing data, results and research.

It is time for us to evolve out of our current system of  independent, randomly acting eye cancer centers. “The best doctor” is the one who realizes multi-center cooperation is the best way to promote progress.

Dr. Finger says, “There is power in numbers!”

It is time for eye cancer to join the world-wide oncology community. Let’s join together to do what we cannot do alone.

This is the first multicenter, international cooperative program focused on improving eye cancer research, diagnosis and patient care. Bio-informatics offers the chance for eye cancer specialists to work together, pool their resources and figure out which diagnostic techniques and therapeutic interventions are best for our patients.

Our first step was to create a unified, standard method of describing each tumor. The AJCC-UICC Ophthalmic Oncology Task Force spent 4-years working on and recently publishing this Ocular Oncology Language. It is being adopted by most of the major ophthalmic journals as a requirement for publication. Next it will serve as a foundation for multi-center comparative studies.