Data repositories are important tools in cancer research, providing safe and sustainable locations to store data, providing access to input data for meta-analyses, and allowing researchers to collaborate and share information across a common resource. The Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives (CSSI) sponsors a diverse array of projects. These projects generate datasets that vary in content and format, yet are related across certain defining characteristics or metadata. Integrated management of the datasets across all sponsored projects make the data more accessible, easily accessed, and potentially reused by the cancer research community.
The CSSI Data Coordinating Center (CSSI DCC) stores and manages access to data generated in support of cancer research funded or supported by the CSSI. This data is in the standard Investigation-Study-Assay tab-delimited format (ISA-TAB) format, which describes a scientific investigation, its study or studies, and each study's assay(s). For more information on the ISA-TAB format, refer to the following section, What is ISA-TAB?, as well as the ISA-TAB specification .
The CSSI DCC Portal is the repository for CSSI DCC data. It serves the following purposes:
For more information about using the CSSI DCC Portal, see:
Investigation-Study-Assay tab-delimited format (ISA-Tab) is a format based on the ISA-TAB specification that is used to capture and communicate the complex metadata required to interpret investigations (experiments) employing combinations of technologies. Metadata in ISA-Tab format facilitates standards-compliant collection, curation, management, and reuse of datasets in a wide variety of life science domains. ISA-TAB builds on the existing paradigm that is Microarray Gene Expression - Tabular format (MAGE-TAB)-a tab-delimited format to exchange microarray data.
Investigations, Studies, and Assays are the three entities around which the ISA-Tab framework is built. Investigation is a higher-order object, whose primary role is to group related Studies. Study is the central unit, containing information on the subject under study, its characteristics and any treatments applied. A Study has associated Assays. Assays are measurements performed either on the whole initial subject or on a sample taken from the subject, which produce qualitative or quantitative data. Assays can be characterized as the smallest complete unit of experimentation producing data associated with a subject.
The ISA-Tab specification relies on the ISA data model to order and classify the metadata. The ISA data model uses the following three types of text files to capture the metadata:
Each of these files is a tab-delimited text file that researchers can create, view, and edit.
The following diagram shows the structure of the ISA data model.
Source: ISA-Tools.org
Before you can log in for the first time, you must register.
To register on the CSSI DCC Portal
When deciding what to use as a password, refer to Password Guidelines.
The system sends to the specified email address an email notification with "CSSI DCC Portal Account Activation" as the subject line.
To complete account activation, click the link in the message. If you requested the ability to upload investigation data, an administrator processes your request. When that administrator has approved your request, the system sends to the specified email address an email notification with "CSSI DCC Portal Request Permission Request: Upload Approved" as the subject line.