Registry Update

In selected newsletters, Dr. James Ford will provide insights into relevant research and recent headlines involving gastric cancer. Dr. Ford is a Gastric Cancer Fund board member and medical oncologist and geneticist at Stanford University Medical Center.

As many of you know, core to our research objectives is the creation of a Gastric Cancer Registry to house all pertinent patient data for analysis.  Thanks in large part to the donations we’ve received to date and the leadership of Stanford University Medical Center, we have made significant progress on this front over the last few months.  First, we have identified a Stanford School of Medicine tool to develop the database to store the Gastric Cancer Registry data.  This secure, HIPAA-compliant database, known as REDCap, will enable us to store both genomic and personal data in a format that will allow easy analysis for researchers in the future.   We are currently in the process of customizing REDCap for the needs of the Gastric Cancer Registry. 

In addition, a questionnaire has been developed that will be utilized to gather information about participants medical history, lifestyle factors (both pre- and post-treatment) and family history.  We are in the process of modifying this questionnaire for web-use so that gastric cancer patients can complete the questionnaire online from the Gastric Cancer Fund website (www.gastriccacncer.org).  Be on the lookout for this on our website in the near future.

In September, the Gastric Cancer Fund hired Liz Schackmann as a research assistant to oversee the development of the registry.  Liz graduated from Stanford in June 2009 with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s of Science in Biology, and a minor in Dance.   She has a keen interest in cancer genetics and worked for the Stanford Clinical Cancer Genetics Program while studying at Stanford.  She is excited to put her efforts towards building the Gastric Cancer Registry.  Liz, welcome to the team!