Case Study: Candiolo Cancer Institute achieves faster, flexible cancer-research insights with Neo4j

Flexible Data Models Provide Life Saving Insights into Complex Cancer Research Data

Candiolo Cancer Institute (IRCC) is an Italian non-profit cancer research center focused on molecular biology and precision medicine that collects complex, hierarchical data from hospitals across Europe. The team needed a laboratory information management system to track samples, their molecular and biological properties, and experimental workflows, but their relational MySQL setup required many costly JOINs, produced slow queries, and struggled with data integration and coherency while needing to be accessible to external collaborators.

IRCC adopted Neo4j as a flexible graph database alongside MySQL and MongoDB, using Neo4j as a central hub to ingest legacy and public data, model genomic domains and ontologies, and uncover complex relationships. The result was faster, more efficient research workflows, a scalable database that adapts to changing biological knowledge, and improved ability to share insights with the international research community.

Candiolo Cancer Institute

Andrea Bertotti

Medical Doctor