About
Research to the People is a not-for-profit organization based in San Francisco, building research consortiums for challenging patient cases in oncology and rare disease.
About us
Research to the People started as a lecture series on AI in the life sciences. Routinely bringing scientists and engineers together inspired us to launch an AI Genomics Hackathon, now remembered as our groundbreaking first patient case.
The response to that first event showed us an unmet need at the intersection of patients and researchers, and real enthusiasm for meeting it. Research to the People was formed shortly after to explore this opportunity, founded on the principles of open science and collaboration for challenging patient cases in oncology and rare disease.
Principles and motivation
We started Research to the People with two principles:
- Open science.
- Open collaboration.
Our motivation is to work on single patient cases where patients have limited options in the clinical system. Two broad questions drive our work:
- How much further can we get for our case if we generate exceptional data?
- How much further can we get for our case if we run cutting-edge analysis?
History
Gen 1: Hackathons
In-person weekend events to generate new insights and analysis for patients. Hundreds of researchers and engineers contributed analysis during the course of our first four patient cases.
Cases: Onno, Bill, John, Leila
Gen 2: Stanford Medicine
Following Leila's case, Research to the People was invited to join Stanford Medicine by Dr. Michael Snyder, Chair of the Personalized Medicine and Genetics Department.
Our pilot cases at Stanford focused on integrative longitudinal multi-omics and working with a multidisciplinary team to translate new insights. We launched our first Symposium, featuring the work our collaborators did for Shirley's and Vanessa's cases. During this period we also produced our first patient film, a documentary on Vanessa's case.
Cases: Shirley, Vanessa, Christine
Gen 3: .org, Grants & Journal
The third generation of our program continues under the not-for-profit organization, focused on creating research hackathon consortiums for challenging patient cases. We introduced two new structural elements: Grants and the Journal. Integrating Grants, Cases and the Journal lets us run a full process focused on personalized analysis for the patient.
Our grants program will provide funding opportunities to PhD- and postdoc-level researchers working on our patient cases. All analysis for our patient cases will be documented and published in the Research to the People Journal.
Cases: Michael, William, Lung Fibrosis