The Cure: Play Games, Defeat Cancer

Today we released a new game on genegames.org called The Cure.  The driving biological problem is to identify gene sets that can be used to build better predictors of breast cancer prognosis.  Specifically we are looking for genes that can be used to predict survival as described in the ongoing SAGE DREAM7 challenge.  The game is a simple (but very difficult), 2-player card game.  Its you versus Barney, (the computer), and you compete to see who can produce the best 5-gene hand in each round.

I'll be writing more about the game as results start to come in.  For now, I just want to heartily thank the team members who helped get this together.  Because of their help, this is definitely the best product of the genegames.org initiative so far.

• Max Nanis: Restyled the entire site - bringing it up from my 1999ish blind hacking to something that looks good in 2012...
• Sal Loguercio:  Hacked the R code needed to get the DREAM7 data processed and into the game.
• Chunlei Wu: Helped Sal with R and with the initial gene filtering algorithms.
• Ian Macleod: Made Barney dance!
• Andrew Su: Helped with design, concept, and algorithms throughout (and provides us all with a home with big windows..)

Thanks team!  (and thanks to widdowquinn who is currently dominating the leader board 3 hours after the official launch).