Abstract 5087: UCSC Cancer Genomics Browser 2.0

Abstract

Abstract As the rate of cancer genomic information production has increased so has the task of managing the computational infrastructure required to host, visualize and analyze that data. The UCSC Cancer Genomics Browser (https://genome-cancer.ucsc.edu) provides a variety of tools to help researchers analyze their data. It includes sortable genomic heatmaps linked to patient clinical attributes that can be explored on demand. A user can run statistical tests between user defined groupings of samples, genomic signature evaluations, and toggle between chromosomal and custom gene sets views. The browser is linked to the UCSC Genome Browser; thus inheriting and integrating the Genome Browser's rich set of human biological and genetic data that enhances the interpretability of the cancer genomics information. UCSC Cancer Genomics Browser 2.0 has been released with drastically enhanced user. Other recent improvements in the Cancer Genomics Browser have been in response to the growing number of collaborative cancer analysis projects. Designed with the privacy issues that come along with patient data in mind, cancer browser accounts provide user-specific sessions, gene sets, genomic profiles, and user-specific data tracks controls. In addition to the public portal, the Cancer Genomics Browser also supports projects that require secured access control. The system hosts results from TCGA, SU2C (Stand Up To Cancer), LINCS (Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures), GEO (Gene Expression Omnibus) and the ISPY trials along with information from individual labs. Researchers that have been authenticated to multiple projects can see the results from all of their projects in a single page. The other aspect of working with multiple collaborative cancer projects is the issue of properly defining data interchange formats. For the Cancer Genome Browser we have created a specification called cgData, which will be used by UCSC to consolidate various types of information from TCGA. cgData is a designed to provide the variety of file formats that are required to describe the heterogeneous data required for the browser. Formats for defining expression matrices, genomic probe definitions, clinical feature data, mutation information and sample mapping have all been specified to enable rapid integration of new data into the Cancer Genome Browser. This format is being developed in collaboration with partners from SU2C and LINCS, and utilities to convert The Broad Institutes TCGA Firehose analysis and MSKCC cBio portal information have already been developed. The publicly available data is organized into downloadable releases on a monthly basis. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2012 Mar 31-Apr 4; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 5087. doi:1538-7445.AM2012-5087