IT infrastructure of an oncological trial where xenografts inform individual second line treatment decision

Translational clinical research is often characterized by a unidirectional information flow from clinical to molecular data by using phenotypes to elucidate molecular disease processes. Here we present the RESIST study which uses xenograft information for individual treatment decisions after resistance to a specific anticancer treatment establishing a bidirectional information flow between patient and molecular biology. The paper discusses the specific challenges related to the IT infrastructure for such bidirectional translational projects and proposes solutions. A specific focus is the safeguarding genomic privacy.