OnCo
ideasIdea

Link single-cell and spatial tumour atlases to clinical outcomes

The detailed molecular maps of tumours being built today mostly lack information on what happened to the patient. Require every atlas sample to carry consented outcome data.

The Human Tumor Atlas Network and similar single-cell and spatial efforts produce rich molecular maps, but clinical annotation is thin and outcome follow-up rare. The proposal requires atlas funding to include consent for registry linkage and a minimum clinical data set (mCODE), with outcome updates pushed annually, so that cell states discovered can be tested as prognostic and predictive markers without new cohorts.

Hypothesis
Outcome-linked atlases will produce at least twice as many validated prognostic cell-state markers per dollar as unlinked atlases.
Rationale
TCGA's value came largely from its clinical annotation and follow-up; single-cell atlases have repeated the molecular depth without the clinical linkage.
What would test it
Add registry linkage to one existing atlas cohort retrospectively; count the number of cell-state associations with survival that can be tested and how many replicate in an independent cohort.
Maturity
early clinical
Who has to act
research
Cost to try
Medium ($1M to $50M)
Years to first evidence
3
Bottlenecks it attacks
  • Data silos · Records, scans, genomes and outcomes sit in separate systems that cannot talk. Every patient's experience is lost to the next.
  • Biomarkers are not validated or standardised · Tests that decide who gets a drug are often not validated prospectively and are measured differently in every lab.

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fronts

1
AI & Computation

technologies

1
Single-cell & spatial profiling

collections

3
CPTAC (Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium)CZ CELLxGENE / Human Cell AtlasTCGA / NCI Genomic Data Commons

bottlenecks

2
Biomarkers are not validated or standardisedData silos