SAGE BIONETWORKS

Research Communities and Challenges: Sage Bionetworks conducts research independently as well as with collaborators worldwide across a variety of disease areas. We work to redefine how complex biological data is gathered, shared and used through open systems, incentives, and norms. Our work includes the building of platforms and services and undertaking research developing predictors relating to health. Research: As biological research has become more data intensive, the breadth of data and expertise required to address research problems has expanded. It requires the integrated efforts of a distributed set of researchers (such as bench/data scientists, data engineers, project managers, administrators, governance experts, and clinical researchers) with shared interests and complementary resources. Effective collaboration depends on a collective ability to work together in trusted ways that lead to translatable biomedical insights. We call this scientific coordination. Sage's scientific coordination stack includes: 1) hypothesis and data generation, 2) data curation, 3) analysis, 4) interpretation, and 5) dissemination. We focus on building a federated network of individuals who bring diverse expertise and approaches to develop robust solutions. Research projects include AMP AD and supplements, TREAT AD, Model AD, RISK Variants, Helmsley VEIOBD, Boston Children's Hospital VEIOBD, MC2, CHOP INCLUDE, CTF Synodos, JHU NTAP, GFF NF, Gray Foundation, Gates COVID Cohort, Exposome, HTAN, CRI iAtlas 4, AACR Genie, Bridge 2 AI, CD2H, Rochester Udall, UMass PECDCC, AoU Governance, Mayo Subtyping, and RWJF Community Consent in Biorepositories in addition to other projects. Challenges: With algorithms playing an increasing role in biomedical analysis and patient care, there's a need for a more rigorous framework for evaluating and improving the capabilities of these algorithms. Sage Bionetworks has pioneered the development of concepts and infrastructure to objectively evaluate algorithms across a broad spectrum of biomedical domains, including bioinformatics, biomedical informatics, and clinical trials. As a trusted partner in hosting challenges and benchmarking initiatives, Sage serves as a broker between data generators and data modelers. We combine technology with biomedical and data science expertise to facilitate the objective assessment of algorithms on critical data sets, including proprietary data and algorithms that cannot be broadly shared. Sage works with the DREAM community to host open challenges. DREAM is recognized as a leader in biomedical competitions, successfully motivating research teams to address fundamental questions about systems biology and translational medicine and to advance computational methods. DREAM challenges invite participants to propose solutions - fostering collaboration and building communities in the process. Sage Bionetworks provides institutional support, along with the infrastructure to host challenges via our Synapse platform. Active Challenges hosted on the Synapse platform in 2023 included: RADx Long Covid, BRATS Data Centric Challenge, PEGS Gene Challenge, FINRISK Dream Challenge, UW/NSF Dynamic Challenge, Open Band Challenge, RARE-X, NIH ITCR, and NLP DREAM.