Put your idle devices to work on cancer research.
CureCrunch is a nonprofit that cuts public cancer genomics data into small pieces and lets volunteers' phones and computers analyze them. Each piece is computed on a second device before the result counts.
We are inviting volunteers in small groups. We will email you when a place opens. We use your email for that and nothing else; see Privacy.
How a result gets made
Split
Public research datasets are cut into work units of up to 100 tumor samples each.
Compute
Your device downloads a unit and runs a fixed analysis program on it. The data never leaves your device except as a small summary.
Check
A second device computes the same unit. The two summaries must agree before the result is marked verified; if they do not, a third device breaks the tie.
Combine
Verified results are pooled into study-level summaries that researchers can read and question.
What it computes today
Mutation frequency
Which genes carry mutations in how many tumors of a given cancer type.
Tumor mutational burden
Mutations per megabase in each tumor, a measure used in studies of immunotherapy response.
Copy-number variation
Genes that are gained or lost in a large share of tumors. Coverage is still limited to part of the genome and is expanding.
Checked against published work
- 20 studiesopen-access TCGA PanCancer studies prepared for analysis
- 23,000+ work unitsready for volunteer devices to compute
- 29 of 29active benchmark checks match published reference values for mutation frequency, survival correlation and tumor mutational burden (8 more checks are under review or blocked)
Where we are
CureCrunch is in an invite-only alpha. The numbers above describe what is prepared. Volunteer results are still being verified and are not yet published as findings.
| Mac | In testing |
|---|---|
| iPhone | In testing through TestFlight |
| Android | In development |
| Windows | In development |
| Linux | Planned |