Happy Fall! We have had a lot of developments these past few months at STTR! We continue to work to address the needs of the community, please feel free to reach out to us anytime. Included below are a few highlights from the past year that we are excited to share with you. Enjoy!
Internship Program
The STTR internship program has been running since 2016 and the team has had numerous interns working on a variety of projects. This year we had five wonderful interns who worked on several different projects, both individually and as a team to support STTR efforts.
The interns presented their final projects to the STTR team in August. We received great feedback from the interns about their experience and we are already looking forward to next summer to continue and improve upon the intern program. Our team really enjoys the internship program and we find a lot of value in working with them!
2022 STTR Interns
Stacie Bood
Stacie is a student at the University of Washington, majoring in Human-Centered Design and Engineering. She has been involved with multiple research projects at the college, including conducting user research investigating a tool for critical infrastructure recovery following natural disasters and designing games to teach data ethics. She applied her adaptive UX skills to the healthcare industry in her STTR internship working on our clinical data visualization tool, Oncoscape.
Grace Guo
Grace is an international student at Seattle University, majoring in Business Analytics and Marketing. During her internship with STTR, she worked on the Oncoscape dashboard redesign via the Observale platform, reorganized our list of Clinical Diagnoses via Excel, and participated in our Oncoscape tutorial video script.
Najma Hashi
Najma is an undergraduate researcher in the Nance Lab at University of Washington, majoring in chemical engineering and minoring in global health. She is also an ambassador for Associated Students of UW and a Team Lead & Mentor of the Science Olympiad. Her STTR project work included working on the Oncoscape video tutorial and helping design content for this newsletter!
Lauren Morris
Lauren Morris is a third-year student at the University of Washington studying Communications & Political Science. She has been a part of the OTR Team for over six months, completing the Spring and Summer Internship. During her time at Fred Hutch, Lauren has explored a variety of communication platforms, designed outreach materials, and worked closely on the SAN project. Going into her junior year, she is excited to continue her studies and attend UW football games.
Allison Nguyen
Allison is going into her senior year at the University of Washington pursuing a double major in Global Health and Data Science. This summer she had the opportunity to work with the OTR team in data cleaning and management for Oncoscape and Caisis, in addition to creating tutorial scripts along with the other interns.
Project Updates
Specimen & Data Acquisition Network (SAN)
We are excited to announce that we have two new partners institutions in WA state:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is a leading center for scientific discovery in chemistry, data analytics, and Earth science, and for technological innovation in sustainable energy and national security. Sara Gosline, Ph.D., Team Lead, Molecular Analytics and Bobbie-Jo Webb-Robertson, Ph.D., Computational Biologist and Chief Scientist will join the SAN Governance Committee to represent PNNL.
Washington State University (WSU) is a public research university committed to its land-grant heritage and tradition of service to society. WSU’s mission is to advance knowledge through creative research and scholarship across a wide range of academic disciplines, to extend knowledge through innovative educational programs and to apply knowledge through local and global engagement that will improve quality of life. John Roll, Ph.D., Professor and Vice Dean for Research will join the SAN Governance Committee to represent WSU.
Please contact us at SAN@fredhutch.org with any requests. More information about the SAN can be found here.
OpenSpecimen: Specimen Data Management Tool
The implementation of OpenSpecimen is in progress and steadily progressing! Our team (which consists of a Product Manager, Change Manager, two Business Analysts and two Data Analysts) has been diving deep to learn and engage with the functionality within OpenSpecimen to learn how to best support each individual group’s needs.
Here's how we typically onboard new teams:
- Learn about your unique requirements
- Map your data to fit within the tool
- Provide data migration services to OpenSpecimen
- Train your team members on using the tool
- Support your team once you are live in Production
Over the past few months, the Specimen Data Management team has been actively engaging with over 17 different lab groups across the Consortium to configure the tool to best meet their needs.
High Level Engagement Status
- Two groups live In Production
- Five groups in User Acceptance Testing/Pre-Production Phase
- Ten groups in Requirements Gathering/Configuration Phase
- Three groups in Inquiry Phase
There are currently 27 additional groups on the waitlist. We look forward to engaging with those teams as we continue to push groups through to production and have available bandwidth.
To learn more about the tool and our project, visit our website here, or email us with any questions: SpecimenData@fredhutch.org.
STTR creates environments which enable researchers and clinicians to accelerate scientific discovery and translate it into preventions and cures for patients. One aspect of that is data abstraction. Follow along to see our accomplishments from 2014 to 2022!
We are actively exploring OpenSpecimen (OS) as our future platform for abstracting clinical data. Despite growth over the past decade, the abstraction program housed in Caisis has met obstacles and we have been seeking opportunities for improvement. OS provides the ability to build and modify tables and fields, sync data dictionaries to a set standard, strives to improve data standardization, and allows seamless, instant querying functions.
Current Priorities
1. Changing underlying database from Caisis to OS
2. Working with select programs to visualize deidentified clinical data in Oncoscape
3. Streamlining and improving data exports
How to submit a data request for research purposes at Fred Hutch
1. Go to Consortium Clinical Oncology Data Access Portal
2. Click link for Ask IT for Consortium Clinical Oncology Data Extracts
3. Complete request form – if PHI is requested, the form will require IRB approval info and may require verification of PHI training
Or visit REDCap directly
Upcoming Speaker: Lara Davis, MD
STTR Sarcoma Translational Research Meeting
Monday, October 3, 2022 4:00pm to 5:00pm Orin Smith Auditorium, South Lake Union 850 Republican Street, Seattle, WA 98109
“Clinical Trials Targeting the Osteosarcoma Tumor-Immune Microenvironment”
Lara Davis, MD
Associate Medical Professor of Medicine, Division Director of Hematology/Oncology School of Medicine Co-Leader Knight Cancer Institute Translational Oncology Program Sarcoma Program Director Oregon Health and Science University
For questions or Zoom options, please contact Shauntel Thomas (srthomas@fredhutch.org)
STTR 10-Year Retreat
We are planning our STTR Retreat for June 2023 (Date TBA), which will also mark the 10 year anniversary of STTR. We are looking forward to connecting with you all and celebrating 10 years of working together!
Recent Events
SAN Symposium
Our first SAN 2022 Symposium was held on July 22nd, 2022, at Fred Hutch. Our goal for the symposium was to provide a platform for the scientific community to come together, share your work and discuss new ideas and to give time for connection and re-connection that many of us haven’t had during the pandemic.
The symposium was attended by a total of 75 attendees (35 in person) and 40 virtually from across 9 institutions in the region.
The SAN Symposium will be an annual event and will be held at different SAN partner institutions over the coming years.
Our team is planning a winter webinar in February 2023, details to follow.
Breast and Ovary Cancers Research Program Retreat (BOC)
STTR worked with Drs. Delphine Chen and Barb Norquist to plan, carry out, and collect feedback for the annual BOC retreat. This year’s theme was “Breast and Ovarian Cancers Screening and Prevention” and included a keynote presentation from Dr. David Mankoff. This was a great opportunity for investigators to meet together in person after two years of virtual retreats.
New STTR Members
We recently welcomed 10 new members to STTR and are thrilled to hear and support all of their exciting research.
Atif Ahmed, MD - Sarcoma
Danielle Cox - Brain, Lung, Lymphoma, Pancreas, Myeloma, Sarcoma
Burcu Darst, PhD - Prostate
Peter Goff, MD, PhD - Head & Neck, Sarcoma, Skin/Cutaneous Oncology
Amir Iravani, MD - Lung, Lymphoma, Myeloma, Pancreas, Prostate, Skin/Cutaneous Oncology
Jeremy Kampp, MD - Skin/Cutaneous Oncology
Shachi Mittal, PhD - Brain, Breast, Skin/Cutaneous Oncology
Rachael Safyan, MD - Colorectal, Pancreas
Stephanie Schaub, MD - Sarcoma
Cory Simpson, MD, PhD - Skin/Cutaneous Oncology
Cynthia Sprenger, PhD - Prostate
Thank you for your engagement with STTR.
STTR will continue to be here to support you. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to our team or access our STTR member site at any time for more resources.