Outsourced Cancer Research, by Spacecraft

[Buster's Uncle]

Outsourced Cancer Research, by Spacecraft
By MARK SCOTT  February 4, 2014, 5:00 am



Researchers hope that a cellphone game that outsources genetic analysis to the general public can reduce the time it takes to study irregularities from years to a just few months.



CAMBRIDGE, England – A cancer research lab on the outskirts of Cambridge seems like an unlikely place to find innovations in gaming.

Yet among the test tubes and other high-tech lab equipment, a group of scientists here is trying to turn people’s seemingly insatiable appetite for mobile games into a resource for research.

Previously, scientists had spent years analyzing complex genetic sequencing by hand, looking for potential irregularities that may lead to cancer. But researchers are hoping a Space Invaders-inspired cellphone game can outsource the analysis to the general public, as players pilot a spaceship through paths based on the genetic sequencing from over 2,000 breast cancer patients.

Their efforts were announced on Tuesday after Cancer Research UK, a British charity, released the game. The hope is to reduce the time it takes to study these genetic faults from years to a just few months, while also giving users a downloadable smartphone game that can be played during their morning commutes.

“It’s pretty cool when you think about what we’re trying to do,” said Oscar Rueda, a Spanish cancer researcher who is part of the scientific team behind the project, at the research lab in Cambridge. “The more people who look at the data through the game, the more accurate our research becomes.”

In early trials, the gaming results have been up to 15 percent more accurate than existing methods used to crunch the cancer data. And scientists expect to have initial findings within six months.

The cancer researchers are part of a growing number of scientists and health care companies that are turning to the gaming world to solve real-world problems. The goal is to piggyback consumers’ interest in mobile games to either further scientific research or educate people on important topics.

In 2008, for example, academics from the University of Washington created an online puzzle game similar to a Rubik’s Cube called FoldIt, which allowed gamers to compete with one another to decipher how proteins folded into three-dimensional shapes.

Projects like Re:Mission, which uses a third-person shooter game to teach young cancer sufferers about their symptoms, and Syrum, a Facebook-based game designed by pharmaceutical companies to educate people about developing new drugs, have had mixed success.

Cancer Research UK introduced Cell Slider in 2012, a rudimentary game that crowd-sourced identifying cancer cells. More a science experiment than an online game, the project reduced the time needed to analyze complex data to a couple of months from almost two years, according to the group.

“The challenge is to create an engaging gaming experience that generates the results scientists need,” said Adam Holtby, a research analyst at the technology consulting firm Ovum in London. “To be successful, it has to be fun.”

For its latest foray into gaming, Cancer Research UK turned to some of the largest names in technology.

During a three-day hackathon in early 2013, scientists, game developers and engineers from companies including Facebook and Google brainstormed about how to create a user-friendly cellphone app that could analyze the mountain of available data.

After securing £200,000, or $325,000, from donors, the scientists then turned to a Scottish tech company to design a game that would evaluate more than 45,000 samples from cancer patients and keep the interest of casual mobile phone gamers.

“The hardest part was keeping the game entertaining,” said Mark Hastings, chief executive of Guerilla Tea, the company that created the game. “Hiding the data analysis within a mobile game is a smart way of solving a real-world problem.”

Despite its lofty ambitions, the game itself seems unlikely to rocket to the top of the most-downloaded charts on either Apple’s iTunes or Google’s Play store anytime soon. Maneuvering the spaceship between meteoroid fields can become monotonous, though players can rank themselves against others, which adds a helpful social component to the game.

Still, the cancer researchers say they’re hoping to attract casual gamers willing to spend a few minutes playing a game that has links to cancer research.

“We didn’t want to create the next Angry Birds,” said Joanna Owens, a senior science information manager at Cancer Research UK, referring to the popular mobile game. “We wanted to make it for a mass audience, something that people could play while they’re waiting for the bus.”


http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/outsourced-cancer-research-by-spacecraft/?_php=true&_type=blogs&partner=yahoofinance&_r=0

[Buster's Uncle]

Citizens seek cancer cure with 'Genes in Space' smartphone game
Reuters
By Kate Kelland  6 hours ago



LONDON (Reuters) - Gaming enthusiasts across the world can from Tuesday join the search for cancer cures with a citizen science project using a smartphone game to help researchers analyze vast volumes of genetic data from tumor samples.

Called "Play to Cure: Genes in Space", the spaceship game is designed for smartphones and was launched by the charity Cancer Research UK (CRUK), which hopes it will speed up the decoding of data to reveal patterns of the genetic faults that cause cancers to grow and spread.

Travelling in a world set 800 years in the future, players guide a fast-paced spaceship safely through a hazard-strewn intergalactic assault course, gathering along the way a fictional precious cargo called "Element Alpha".

Each time a player steers the ship to follow the Element Alpha path, they also reveal patterns and, unwittingly, provide analysis of variations in the genetic data, explained Hannah Keartland, who led the project for CRUK and unveiled the game at a London launch on Tuesday.

It is this information that will be fed back to CRUK scientists. And to ensure accuracy, each section of gene data will be tracked by several different players.

"We want anyone, anywhere, at any age, to download this game and play it," said Keartland.

If everyone around the world were to play the game for even a couple of minutes each, she said, "we could have an absolutely mind-blowing impact in terms of accelerating research".

An estimated 14 million people worldwide are diagnosed with cancer each year and that toll is expected to rise to 22 million a year within the next 20 years, according to a World Health Organization report issued on Monday.

Scientists will use the information gathered from "Genes in Space" players to work out which genes are faulty in cancer patients. This in turn should help them develop new drugs that target specific genetic faults, and new ways to figure out how to stop cancer developing in the first place.

"It's not just a game, it's way of saving lives," said Tony Selman, a 72-year-old prostate cancer survivor from Middlesex, central England, who helped launch the new game.

Play to Cure is CRUK's second citizen project following a similar but smaller one last year called CellSlider - which the charity said cut the time needed for researchers to analyze a set of breast cancer samples from 18 months to three months.

Professor Carlos Caldas, an oncologist at CRUK's Cambridge Institute, explained that it works by using data generated by screening tools called gene microarrays - which scientists use to look for areas of the human genome that show up faults in cancer patients - a sign they may be causing the disease.

Gene microarrays are useful for analyzing large genetic faults known as copy number alterations - when a whole section of the chromosome is gained or lost.

Since these large sections of chromosomes may involve many different genes, scientists need a way to work out which are the ones driving cancer - known as oncogenes - and which ones are just "passenger" genes along for the ride, he said.

Scientists generally use computer software to trawl through the huge amounts of data generated by microarrays to spot the precise locations of copy number changes, but in many cases these are not accurate enough.

"Computers are very good, but they are not perfect," Caldas told reporters. "The human eye is still the best technology we have for picking up these patterns, and...Genes in Space is harnessing that power."


http://news.yahoo.com/citizens-seek-cancer-cure-39-genes-space-39-124806736--sector.html