The crisis over the novel coronavirus pandemic is changing the way researchers communicate and work together to create and disseminate knowledge, making the process faster and more transparent. In the race to develop new drugs and vaccines, many scientists are now sharing their research data\u2014the body of primary information they use as a basis for their research conclusions\u2014in real time. This comes as part of an effort by governments, industry, international organizations, funding agencies, and the scientific community to advance open science practices in fighting the pandemic, including free access to information and collaborative research. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), for example, stressed the importance of this strategy in tackling COVID-19 in a policy brief published in May: \u201cIn global emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, open science policies can remove obstacles to the free flow of research data and ideas, and thus accelerate the pace of research critical to combating the disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many initiatives have emerged to promote sharing of research data about the novel coronavirus. Among these initiatives is Nextstrain, an open-source database of SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences created by researchers at the University of Basel, in Switzerland, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle. The database allows researchers to map out patterns of viral epidemic spread and analyze information from multiple sources on the virus\u2019s genetic changes. \u201cResearchers can share and compare data, and identify where in the world the coronavirus is mutating, explains Trevor Bedford, who cocreated the platform. The project has revealed connections between COVID-19 cases in Iran and strains identified in Australia, as well as a patient in Taiwan who was infected with a strain from the Netherlands. Researchers have also determined that the SARS-CoV-2 strain that spread to Italy later found its way to Latin America and Africa, and that Asian countries have been reinfected with strains that they had previously exported to Europe.<\/p>\n
Nextstrain provides access to the genomes of 1,787 SARS-CoV-2 strains circulating in Latin America<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Bedford believes the platform could also have been useful in recent epidemics, such as the Zika virus between April 2015 and November 2016. \u201cBrazil\u2019s Northeast was the hardest-hit region. If we then had a real-time tool for mapping how and at what rate the Zika virus was spreading around the world, perhaps we could have predicted that this region would be at greatest risk. This would give public authorities a chance to limit the spread of the disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
The urgent need for data on the novel coronavirus led the European Commission to launch the COVID-19 Data Portal in collaboration with partner institutions. The platform allows researchers to share, access, and analyze different types of data about the new coronavirus, including virus-specific proteins and genes. This information is being used to develop artificial intelligence systems that can identify key areas of COVID-19 research around the world, overlaps in research efforts, and promising approaches that are worth exploring. The portal also aggregates information hosted in other European repositories, such as the UK Node of ELIXIR, a platform that brings together Europe\u2019s major life-science data archives and has recently launched an exclusive section for SARS-CoV-2 data\u2014providing information about virus-specific genes, the cell lines most useful for studying the virus\u2019s mechanisms of action, and proteins that interact with the pathogen.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/div>\nThe data-sharing effort has also found its way to Brazil. One example is the COVID-19 Data Sharing\/BR platform, launched in June. Created through a FAPESP collaboration involving the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP), the Fleury Group, the Albert Einstein Jewish Hospital, and S\u00edrio-Liban\u00eas Hospital, the repository aggregates laboratory and demographic data on around 180,000 individuals who have tested either positive or negative for COVID-19, as well as data on 6,500 case outcomes\u2014either recovery or death\u2014and almost 5 million results from clinical exams and laboratory tests. \u201cWe expect this information will be useful for improving diagnoses, for research into factors affecting the progression of the disease in Brazil, and for investigations into drug and vaccine candidates,\u201d said FAPESP\u2019s scientific director, neuroscientist Luiz Eug\u00eanio Mello, during the unveiling of the initiative.<\/p>\n
The COVID-19 Data Sharing\/BR Platform brings together laboratory and demographic data on approximately 180,000 people<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The new repository is using computing infrastructure launched by the USP Office for Information Technology in December 2019 to connect research data repositories at different scientific institutions in S\u00e3o Paulo (see<\/em> Pesquisa FAPESP issue no. 287<\/em><\/a>). \u201cHaving the infrastructure readily available helped us to fast-track implementation of the COVID-19 platform,\u201d says physicist Sylvio Canuto, associate dean for research at USP.<\/p>\n
There has been a longstanding drive to increase sharing of research data, for a variety of reasons. One is improving reproducibility in research, and making primary research data widely available so that other scientists can verify the accuracy and relevance of published results. With the pandemic, this became even more urgent. \u201cData-sharing can optimize research efforts and catalyze new collaborations, accelerating the pace of discovery,\u201d explains Claudia Bauzer Medeiros, a professor of databases at the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and a manager of the eScience and Data Science programs at FAPESP. \u201cIt also allows researchers to conduct studies that combine data from multiple sources.\u201d<\/p>\n