CancerINFO: A Resource for Tissue-specific Accession and Analysis of Cancer Genome Features

Future progress in precision oncology is dependent on both a comprehensive understanding of the associations between tissue-specific cancer genome features (CGFs) and their efficacy, as well as the power to access clinically actionable information in a clinically acceptable time-frame.

Here, we have created an open-access knowledgebase CancerINFO for tissue-specific genome features in cancer. The information is curated from various sources including guidelines from the FDA, NCCN, AACR, ASCO, ClinicalTrails.gov and the scientific literature. CancerINFO’s hierarchy system standardizes the CGFs-guided evidences into four clinical statements, five feature types, 30 tissue sites and 244 cancers of five grades. To date, ~12938 assocoations between clinical statement and CGFs in 1758 unique genes have been curated. The gene-mediated cancer pathway was regulated through more than 70% CGFs-associated genes.

In addition to providing both the search and browsing function, CancerINFO API helps users to integrate our knowledgebase into their workflows or protocols. Case searching of active patients provides insight into clinical histories of specific CGFs, as well as those that could improve clinical utilities by additional investigation. Outside of CancerINFO, there are no publicly available knowledgebases to describe tissue-specific CGFs currently. CancerINFO is not intended to replace the other available resources. On the other hand, it should be viewed as complementary in our ongoing efforts to support annotation and clinical treatment decision.