ROCK: a resource for integrative breast cancer data analysis

Abstract

Given the steady increase in breast cancer rates in both the developed and developing world, there has been a concerted research effort undertaken worldwide to understand the molecular mechanisms underpinning the disease. The data generated from numerous clinical trials and experimental studies shed light on different aspects of the disease. We present a new version of the ROCK database (rock.icr.ac.uk), which integrates such diverse data types allowing unique analyses of published breast cancer experimental data. We have added several new data types and analysis modules to ROCK, which allow the user to interactively query and research the huge amounts of available experimental data and perform complex correlations across studies and data types such as gene expression, genomic copy number aberrations, micro RNA expression, RNA interference, survival analysis, clinical annotation and signalling protein networks. We present the recent and major functional updates and enhancements to the ROCK resource, including new analysis modules and microRNA and NGS data integration, and illustrate how ROCK can be used to confirm known experimental results as well as generate novel leads and new experimental hypotheses using the Wnt signalling cell surface receptor FZD7 and the Myc oncogene. ROCK provides a unique breast cancer analysis platform of integrated experimental datasets at the genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic level. This paper presents how ROCK has transitioned from being simply a database to an interactive resource useful to the broader breast cancer research community in our effort to facilitate research into the underlying molecular mechanisms of breast cancer.