Advancing Human Genomics Data Sharing In Australia: Highlights From The Australian BioCommons

Currently, the management and sharing of human genomics data in Australia is siloed within  national institutes. The Australian BioCommons aims to remove barriers to access through collaborative projects with research institutes, infrastructure partners, and government agencies. Here we describe the major projects that we are undertaking to advance Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reuseable (FAIR) human genomics data sharing in Australia. The Australian BioCommons provides strategic leadership, project coordination, technical expertise and domain knowledge to these national, multi-institutional and collaborative projects.

The Human Genomes Platform Project (HGPP) aims to leverage international best practice technologies and global standards to accelerate FAIR human genomics data sharing in Australia. Involving leading Australian human genomics research organisations, along with national computing infrastructure partners, the HGPP is facilitating the deployment of much needed genomic data sharing infrastructure in Australia. Specifically, the project is investigating which existing international solutions meet Australian requirements with sub-projects aligning to GA4GH and other internationally developed software and standards (Beacon, CILogon, Resource Entitlement Management Software, Federated EGA). 

The Australian Cardiovascular disease Data Commons (ACDC) will be a comprehensive, secure, scalable, internationally integrated data infrastructure connected to global best practice analysis platforms, to enable the identification of novel insights and predictive biomarkers for Coronary Artery Disease (CAD). Working with members of the CAD Frontiers consortium, the Australian BioCommons has established a pilot data portal, designed a data dictionary, and developed tools and pipelines to facilitate its use. We plan to onboard 18 cohorts with detailed clinical and molecular profiling data, representing 395,000 Australians.