Several recently announced collaborations between academic research institutions and big data analytics vendors powering advanced discovery technologies will bring the power of big data to new studies that may have significant impacts on future therapies and treatments. With oncology and genomics in the spotlight, personalized medicine is poised to take a leap forward as researchers dive into complex diseases. By analysing data from multiple cancer types, we could evaluate prognostic models and identify gene alterations that led to tumor formation. This wouldn’t have been obtained by looking at tumor data from just one cancer type.