CellMiner Companion: an interactive web application to explore CellMiner NCI-60 data.

Area of Science:

• Cancer Research
• Bioinformatics
• Data Visualization

Background:

• The National Cancer Institute-60 (NCI-60) human tumor cell line panel is a critical resource for cancer research, offering extensive drug sensitivity, molecular, and phenotypic data.
• CellMiner is a web-based tool for accessing and analyzing NCI-60 data, supporting queries for up to 150 drugs or genes.
• The current output format of CellMiner, providing individual Excel files per drug or gene, poses challenges for comprehensive data exploration, especially with large queries.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a user-friendly web application, CellMiner Companion, to improve the exploration and visualization of NCI-60 data.
• To overcome the limitations of CellMiner's output format for large-scale data analysis.
• To enhance the accessibility and utility of the NCI-60 dataset for cancer researchers.

Main Methods:

• Development of a web application using R and Shiny.
• Integration with CellMiner to process and visualize query outputs.
• Implementation of interactive visualization tools for exploring drug sensitivity and molecular data.

Main Results:

• CellMiner Companion provides an intuitive interface for exploring CellMiner output.
• The application facilitates the visualization of relationships between drugs, genes, and cell line responses.
• Enhanced data accessibility allows for more efficient hypothesis generation and data-driven research.

Conclusions:

• CellMiner Companion significantly improves the usability of NCI-60 data for cancer research.
• The tool democratizes access to complex biological data, fostering new discoveries.
• This application represents a valuable advancement in cancer bioinformatics tools.