NEWS

SHARE-CTD is participating in the 2026 ISCB/GMDS conference in Freiburg

2026.04.07

From September 27 to October 1, 2026, SHARE-CTD will participate in the ISCB/GMDS 2026 in Freiburg. Ka Hin Tai (UnivRennes), Giulia Varvarà (UnivRennes), Ulrich Mansmann (LMU), Marcel Müller (LMU), and Nikolaus von Bomhardt (LMU) will organize the workshop "A Sharing Intention Is Not Enough: Guided Experiments on Clinical Trial Data Quality and Reuse." We are delighted that their proposal was accepted!

Datathon 1 - Paper published: “Supporting the Reanalysis and Reuse of Clinical Trial Data: a case study"

2026.04.07

We are pleased to announce that the first joint publication by our 11 SHARE-CTD doctoral students has been published by Springer Nature under the title “Supporting the Reanalysis and Reuse of Clinical Trial Data: a case study".

The paper emerged from the first Datathon, which took place in Göttingen in July 2025 and aimed to reproduce a clinical trial in the field of oncology. The 11 doctoral students, divided into 5 teams and supervised by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Mansmann, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Sax, and Prof. Dr. Leonhard Held, reached the following conclusion: The conclusions of a large-scale oncology clinical trial were confirmed. Reporting gaps, such as incomplete protocols and broken links, should be addressed in future studies. This case study highlights the value of systematic reproducibility checks for the transparency of clinical research, as well as the challenges in data sharing with regard to reproducibility.

The full publication can be found here: DOI: 10.1186/s13063-026-09646-y.

Datathon I as part of the Lunch & Learn series at UZH

2026.03.16

On 16 February 2026, as part of the Lunch & Learn series at UZH, Leonhard Held (UZH) gave a presentation on the topic of "Datathon I": Reproducibility and data reuse are essential for scientific transparency and maximizing the value of clinical trial data, yet they remain under-practiced. Good research data management (RDM) is central to enabling these practices by ensuring datasets are well-documented, accessible, and interoperable.

This presentation illustrates these benefits through a case study of the CAO/ARO/AIO-04 rectal cancer clinical trial. As part of the SHARE-CTD doctoral program, a multi-team datathon was organized to independently reproduce the trial’s primary findings using anonymized patient-level data and supporting materials. Five teams employed R and Python to replicate key outcomes, tables, figures, and statistical analyses. Despite minor discrepancies due to incomplete documentation or software differences, all teams successfully reproduced the primary results, confirming the reliability of the original findings. The datathon also enabled robustness checks and additional analyses, demonstrating how well-managed data supports secondary research beyond reproducibility. Challenges—such as broken protocol links, lack of complete data dictionaries, and partially documented analytical decisions—highlight the importance of comprehensive RDM for enabling data reuse.

This case study shows that effective RDM underpins reproducibility, transparency, and scientific trust. By providing structured metadata, code, and documentation, clinical trial data can be reused to validate results, explore new questions, and inform future research and clinical decision-making.

Third Schooling in June 2026 online

2026.01.07

Led by Prof. Dr. Florian Naudet (University of Rennes, UNIVREN) the third SHARE-CTD schooling will take place online from June 1 to June 12, 2026.

Third Datathon in September 2026 in Göttingen

2025.12.19

Led by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Sax (University Medical Center Göttingen, UMG) the third SHARE-CTD datathon will take place at Rechenzentrum Göttingen from 7th to 11th of September 2026.