Technology Cancer research to be aided by smartphone game developed at hackathon

From Wired:

Cancer cell

Facebook, Google and Amazon Web Services developers will join academics this weekend for a hackathon that will see genetic data provided by Cancer Research UK transformed into a citizen science smartphone game app.

The game, provisionally called GeneRun, will allow the public to look for common changes in genes -- caused by a gain or loss of chromosomes -- that make up breast cancer tumours to help explain what mutations drive the cancer. The idea is to crowdsource scientific investigation that would otherwise take lab workers years to trawl through, and speed up targeted drug invention significantly.

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Source: BBC Radio 4 and the above from Wired by Liat Clark.