NIH Award to Establish Data Integration Hub for Common Fund Programs

October 17, 2023 - Researchers at the University of California San Diego and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai received an $8.5 million award to establish a data integration hub to accelerate the work of National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund-supported projects.

These programs aim to gather data from human cells, tissues, and patients to bolster biomedical research, including work to develop novel therapeutics and cures for various diseases.

To further the accessibility, reusability, and interoperability of data generated by Common Fund programs in line with the FAIR Principles, the NIH created the Common Fund Data Ecosystem (CFDE).

The CFDE is designed to help researchers effectively utilize NIH Common Fund datasets to generate new hypotheses and drive biomedical discoveries.

Following the success of the CFDE’s pilot, the NIH awarded a total of $17 million over five years to establish two data centers: the CFDE Data Resource Center and the CFDE Knowledge Center.

UCSD and Mount Sinai will spearhead the CFDE Data Resource Center, while researchers from the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard will lead the CFDE Knowledge Center.

“By integrating data from various omics technologies and by making these datasets readily available for analysis and visualization with artificial intelligence and machine learning, many discoveries can emerge,” said Avi Ma’ayan, PhD, the contact principal investigator of the CFDE Data Resource Center, director of the Mount Sinai Center for Bioinformatics and professor of Pharmacological Sciences, and Artificial Intelligence and Human Health, in the press release. “We are delighted that the NIH has recognized our past contributions to the CFDE, the library of integrated cellular-based signatures (LINCS), and the illuminating the druggable genome (IDG) Common Fund programs and trusts us to lead this new effort.”

Many Common Fund datasets are currently found in distinct data portals, and an absence of shared data processing protocols and standardized community practices has led to significant underutilization of these resources.

The researchers indicated that the two new centers provide a unique opportunity for research teams to take full advantage of the wealth of data produced by NIH Common Fund projects.

“The NIH Common Fund programs produce flagship cutting-edge and transformative resources for the entire biomedical research community. This new award solidifies the central role Mount Sinai is playing in the revolution of biomedical research into a data-driven and AI-driven enterprise which is expected to significantly improve patient health and lifespan in the coming two decades,” said Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD, Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience, director of The Friedman Brain Institute, and dean for Academic Affairs of Icahn Mount Sinai, and chief scientific officer of the Mount Sinai Health System.

This is the NIH’s most recent effort to help researchers gain insights into human disease using data.

This week, the agency’s All of Us Research Program awarded a $30 million grant to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus (CU Anschutz) and its partners to launch the Center for Linkage and Acquisition of Data (CLAD).

The new center is set to advance research into the drivers of disease by connecting existing All of Us participant data with additional types of information, such as claims, mortality, and environmental information.

CLAD will support the integration of these new data streams and help bridge potential gaps in the current All of Us database, making the information more valuable to researchers.