Florida Cancer Research (FL CARES) network and the Platform for Accelerating Collaborative Computational Cancer Research (PAC3R)

The Florida Cancer Research (FL CARES) Network (https://floridacancernetwork.org/) is a statewide collaboration advancing cancer research and improving patient outcomes through coordinated research initiatives and a focus on understanding population-health variation across demographic categories. Funded by the State of Florida Department of Health's Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program, FL CARES unites six research organizations, including the state's three NCI-designated Cancer Centers. The Network has established a collaborative research consortium with unified policies, coordinated data and metadata standards, and diverse datasets and analysis tools.To accelerate computational research, FL CARES is developing the Platform for Accelerating Collaborative Computational Cancer Research (PAC3R) (https://pac3r.floridacancernetwork.org). This advanced informatics system enables FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) data management, including standardization, harmonization, and integration of multimodal cancer-related datasets. PAC3R is designed to support secure data sharing, deployment of scalable bioinformatics tools, and collaborative analyses across the FL CARES Network.PAC3R builds upon the Sylvester Data Portal (SDP) (https://sdp.miami.edu/), a cloud-based multi-omics platform that manages clinicogenomic and research data for the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. PAC3R integrates diverse multimodal cancer datasets to support analyses such as transcriptional perturbation signatures, cell sensitivity data, and small-molecule interactions, alongside local cancer panels from Moffitt Cancer Center and Nova Southeastern University. The platform also incorporates large-scale public genomics resources including The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC).Overall, the FL CARES Network and its advanced informatics system, the PAC3R platform, demonstrate the power of a unified semantic data model, harmonized datasets, and computational strategies to detect and understand outcome variations across Florida's populations, supporting the long-term goal of advancing effective cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment for all.