Big data helps identify better way to research breast cancer's spread

Scientists are using a lot of genomic data to identify medical issues sooner in patients, but they're also using it to assist their scientific counterparts in researching diseases better.In a new study, Michigan State University researchers are analyzing large volumes of data, often referred to as big data, to determine better research models to fight the spread of breast cancer and test potential drugs. Current models used in the lab frequently involve culturing cells on flat dishes, or cell lines, to model tumor growth in patients.The study is published in Nature Communications.This spreading, or metastasis, is the most common cause of cancer-related death, with around 90% of patients not surviving. To date, few drugs can treat cancer metastasis and knowing which step could go wrong in the drug discovery process can be a shot in the dark."The differences between cell lines and tumor samples have raised the critical question to what extent cell lines can capture the makeup of tumors," said Bin Chen, senior author and assistant professor in the College of Human Medicine.To answer this question, Chen and Ke Liu, first author of the study and a postdoctoral scholar, performed an integrative analysis of data taken from genomic databases including The Cancer Genome Atlas, Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia, Gene Expression Omnibus and the database of Genotypes and Phenotypes."Leveraging open genomic data to discover new cancer therapies is our ultimate goal," said Chen, who is part of MSU's Global Impact Initiative. "But before we begin to pour a significant amount of money into expensive experiments, we need to evaluate early research models and choose the appropriate one for drug testing based on genomic features."By using this data, the researchers found substantial differences between lab-created breast cancer cell lines and actual advanced, or metastatic, breast cancer tumor samples. Surprisingly, MDA-MB-231, a cancer cell line used in nearly all metastatic breast cancer research, showed little genomic similarities to patient tumor samples."I couldn't believe the result," Chen said. "All evidence pointed to large differences between the two. But, on the flip side, we were able to identify other cell lines that closely resembled the tumors and could be considered, along with other criteria, as better options for this research."The organoid model was found to most likely mirror patient samples. This newly developed technology uses 3D tissue cultures and can capture more of the complexities of how tumors form and grow.

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Airbyte Racks Up Awards from InfoWorld, BigDATAwire, Built In; Builds Largest and Fastest-Growing User Community

Airbyte | January 30, 2024

Airbyte, creators of the leading open-source data movement infrastructure, today announced a series of accomplishments and awards reinforcing its standing as the largest and fastest-growing data movement community. With a focus on innovation, community engagement, and performance enhancement, Airbyte continues to revolutionize the way data is handled and processed across industries. “Airbyte proudly stands as the front-runner in the data movement landscape with the largest community of more than 5,000 daily users and over 125,000 deployments, with monthly data synchronizations of over 2 petabytes,” said Michel Tricot, co-founder and CEO, Airbyte. “This unparalleled growth is a testament to Airbyte's widespread adoption by users and the trust placed in its capabilities.” The Airbyte community has more than 800 code contributors and 12,000 stars on GitHub. Recently, the company held its second annual virtual conference called move(data), which attracted over 5,000 attendees. Airbyte was named an InfoWorld Technology of the Year Award finalist: Data Management – Integration (in October) for cutting-edge products that are changing how IT organizations work and how companies do business. And, at the start of this year, was named to the Built In 2024 Best Places To Work Award in San Francisco – Best Startups to Work For, recognizing the company's commitment to fostering a positive work environment, remote and flexible work opportunities, and programs for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Today, the company received the BigDATAwire Readers/Editors Choice Award – Big Data and AI Startup, which recognizes companies and products that have made a difference. Other key milestones in 2023 include the following. Availability of more than 350 data connectors, making Airbyte the platform with the most connectors in the industry. The company aims to increase that to 500 high-quality connectors supported by the end of this year. More than 2,000 custom connectors were created with the Airbyte No-Code Connector Builder, which enables data connectors to be made in minutes. Significant performance improvement with database replication speed increased by 10 times to support larger datasets. Added support for five vector databases, in addition to unstructured data sources, as the first company to build a bridge between data movement platforms and artificial intelligence (AI). Looking ahead, Airbyte will introduce data lakehouse destinations, as well as a new Publish feature to push data to API destinations. About Airbyte Airbyte is the open-source data movement infrastructure leader running in the safety of your cloud and syncing data from applications, APIs, and databases to data warehouses, lakes, and other destinations. Airbyte offers four products: Airbyte Open Source, Airbyte Self-Managed, Airbyte Cloud, and Powered by Airbyte. Airbyte was co-founded by Michel Tricot (former director of engineering and head of integrations at Liveramp and RideOS) and John Lafleur (serial entrepreneur of dev tools and B2B). The company is headquartered in San Francisco with a distributed team around the world. To learn more, visit airbyte.com.

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