About CIViC¶
Advancing Cancer Precision Medicine with Community Collaboration
Precision medicine refers to the use of prevention and treatment strategies that are tailored to the unique features of each individual and their disease. In the context of cancer this might involve the identification of specific variants shown to predict response to a targeted therapy. The biomedical literature describing associations between genetic variants and clinically relevant outcomes is large and growing rapidly. Currently variant interpretations exist largely in siloed private or otherwise encumbered databases resulting in extensive repetition of effort. Effective precision medicine requires this information to be centralized, debated, and interpreted for application in a clinical setting. CIViC is an open access, open source, community-driven web resource for Clinical Interpretation of Variants in Cancer, available online at civicdb.org. Our goal is to enable precision medicine by providing an educational forum for dissemination of knowledge and active discussion of the clinical significance of cancer genome alterations. For more details and to cite CIViC please refer to the CIViC publication in Nature Genetics.
How our Collaborative Process is Different
All content created in CIViC is, and will continue to be, freely available, without restriction under a Public Domain Attribution. Anyone can contribute to CIViC by simply registering for an account. Users join the community with “Curator” level privileges that allow them to comment or propose additions or revisions on any knowledge in CIViC. Proposed additions and revisions are then reviewed by users with “Editor” level privileges before gaining “Accepted” status. Content that has been Submitted but not yet Accepted should be interpreted and used with caution. Community Curators work together with Editors towards comprehensive and accurate interpretations of the clinical relevance of variants in cancer.
Contributing to CIViC
CIViC provides an open forum for community contributions. Anyone can create an account to flag problems, add comments, propose revisions to existing content, or submit new evidence, assertions, or summaries. All proposed additions/revisions enter a pending state until considered for acceptance by a CIViC editor. All content contributed is immediately considered public domain knowledge. For more details on how to contribute please read our curating docs.
Using CIViC Data
CIViC provides an educational resource to support better understanding of the current state of precision oncology. It may also provide useful summaries and links to relevant published evidence for the clinical relevance of specific variants. With appropriate validation (e.g., in a CLIA certified, CAP accredited environment) it may also be used to develop panels or software for variant interpretation in a clinical diagnostic setting. However, direct use of the CIViC application and website is intended for purely research and development purposes. It should not be used for emergencies or taken as medical or professional advice.
We provide CIViC data freely to all under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication, CC0 1.0 Universal License. Data can be downloaded in bulk as tab-separated files, VCF files, or accessed through our fully open and documented API.