CANDLE Exascale Deep Learning and Simulation Enabled Precision Medicine for Cancer

The nation has recently embarked on an all government approach to the problem of cancer, codified in the'Cancer Moonshot' initiative of the Obama administration led by Vice President Biden. Cancer is an extremely complex disease, which disrupts basic biological processes at a fundamental level, leading to renegade cells threatening the health of an individual. To accelerate the capabilities needed to realize the promise envisioned for the Cancer Moonshot and to establish a new paradigm for cancer research for years to come, the Department of Energy (DOE) entered into a partnership with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This partnership identified three key challenges that the combined resources of DOE and NCI can accelerate: to provide better understanding of the disease, to make effective use of the ever-growing volumes and diversity of cancer related data to build predictive models, and, ultimately, to provide guidance and support decisions on anticipated effective treatments for individual patients. Four DOE national laboratories are collaborating with the NCI and the NCI-supported Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research to advance these challenges.