Accelerating the Pace of Childhood Cancer Research with Big Data
The Childhood Cancer Data Lab was established by Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) in 2017. ALSF recognized that pediatric cancer researchers face hurdles that impede the pace of research.
ALSF introduced the Data Lab to empower researchers and scientists across the globe by removing roadblocks, supporting opportunities for collaboration and sharing, and developing resources to accelerate new treatment and cure discovery.
The Data Lab's mission is to empower pediatric cancer experts poised for the next big discovery with the knowledge, data, and tools to reach it. We construct tools that make vast amounts of data widely available, easily mineable, and broadly reusable. We train researchers and scientists to better understand their own data and to advance their work more quickly.
To date, the Data Lab has trained over 200 childhood cancer researchers and has harmonized over 1.3 million data samples and made them easily available. Learn more about the Data Lab’s impact here.
Projects
The Data Lab develops tools designed to make data and analysis widely available and broadly reusable.
Data Science Workshops
The Data Lab offers workshops to teach researchers the data science skills they need to examine their own data. Our courses focus on the most cutting edge tools and analysis techniques. We ensure that participants walk away with an understanding of:
- The R programming language, R Notebooks, and some reproducible research practices.
- Processing bulk and single-cell RNA-seq data from raw all the way to downstream analyses.
- Downstream analyses methods like differential expression analyses, hierarchical clustering, and preparing publication-ready plots.
“I think anyone who is working on or near single-cell data should take this course. I am so much more confident in what I understand about single-cell analyses compared to where I was at the beginning. 10/10 recommend.”
Donate
Make a donation to support the Data Lab’s mission of putting knowledge and resources in the hands of pediatric cancer experts poised for the next big discovery.
With your help, we can
Fund innovative models to scale training workshops.
Offer our expertise and provide consultation on projects that will change the future for children fighting cancer.
Train at least 200 childhood cancer researchers over the next four years.
Blog
The Data Lab will be holding a virtual workshop, Introduction to Single-cell RNA-Sequencing, from August 4-8, 2025! In this workshop, Data Lab staff will introduce researchers studying pediatric cancer to the R programming language, the Tidyverse R packages for data science, single-cell RNA-seq data analysis, and annotating cell types.
Applications are open for the Data Lab's next training workshop! We will cover advanced topics in the analysis of single-cell RNA-seq data for researchers studying pediatric cancer. The 3-day course will take place June 10-12, 2025 from 9am-5pm Eastern time in Bala Cynwyd, PA, just outside of Philadelphia.
Before we launched OpenScPCA, we had to outline the process for contributing to analyses and then document that process for others. In addition, when designing the process for contributing to the project, we made sure to implement strategies to ensure reproducibility over the life cycle of the project. After planning and documenting expectations for contributors, we prepared to launch our first call for contributions, where we asked pediatric cancer experts to help us assign cell type annotations for all samples on the Portal. We thought it would be helpful to have an existing analysis module that other contributors could reference, so we picked a member of our science team (it’s me, hi 👋) to go through the process of developing an analysis module.
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