APAview: A web-based platform for alternative polyadenylation analyses in hematological cancers.

Area of Science:

• Bioinformatics
• Genomics
• Cancer Research

Background:

• Hematologic malignancies like acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) originate in blood-forming tissues.
• Genetic and molecular alterations, including mutations and gene expression changes, often drive these cancers.
• Alternative polyadenylation (APA) dysregulation is implicated in hematological malignancies, affecting gene expression.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a user-friendly, web-based platform, APAview, for exploring APA features in hematologic cancers.
• To simplify the time-consuming and laborious processes of APA data pre-processing, analysis, and visualization.
• To facilitate APA feature screening and mining for disease research.

Main Methods:

• APAview is a server-client web platform utilizing Python3, Flask, Jinja2, Bootstrap, and Plotly.
• It supports the interactive analysis of multimodal data, including APA quantification (QAPA/DaPars), gene expression, and clinical information.
• The platform allows for correlation, survival, and differential analyses across user-defined groups.

Main Results:

• APAview was successfully used to explore APA features in APL and AML.
• The platform demonstrated the capability to handle and analyze multimodal data interactively.
• APAview can be adapted for analyzing APA features in other diseases by uploading relevant experimental data.

Conclusions:

• APAview provides a comprehensive and accessible tool for APA analysis in hematologic cancers.
• The platform streamlines the investigation of APA's role in cancer development, diagnosis, and treatment.
• APAview has the potential to accelerate research in both hematologic malignancies and other diseases involving APA.