ETRIKS IT platfroms for large-scale biomedical research

Abstract

Introduction: Research projects, such as U-BIOPRED (Unbiased BIOmarkers for the PREDiction of respiratory disease outcomes), require technology enabling multimodal data integration and analysis, hypothesis management, collaboration and result reproducibility. Aims and Objectives: Integration of clinical and omics data from human subjects, animal and cell models. Omics data include gene expression, protein abundance, lipid abundance, breath metabolites and genetics. Secure, multi-user access, data storage and analysis capabilities. Saving and sharing results, provenance capturing and publication management. Methods: For clinical and omics data integration, storage and analysis, the tranSMART platform was extended by the European Translational Research and Knowledge Management Services (eTRIKS) project. For collaboration, transparency and reproducibility of analyses the Knowledge Portal (KP) was developed. Results: The human asthma cohort dataset, stored on the eTRIKS-tranSMART platform, enables real-time analyses and inferences (e.g. Abdominal Girth / FEV1 correlation (rs=-0.14, p=0.0015) in asthma patients). The dataset is constantly growing with newly generated data. The KP has led to the development and review of at least 10 statistical analysis plans linked to source data and tens of papers in the publication pipeline. Conclusions: eTRIKS IT platforms are essential in streamlining large scale biomedical research.