James Eddy, PhD, CRI iAtlas Grantee

Dr. James Eddy leads the development of the the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) iAtlas, an interactive web platform and a set of analytic tools for studying interactions between tumors and the immune microenvironment (Eddy et al., F1000Research 2020). These tools allow researchers to explore associations between a variety of genomic characterizations of immune response, clinical phenotypes, germline genetics, and response to immunotherapy. Immune checkpoint inhibitor analysis modules allow for interactive exploration of the relationship between possible biomarkers of immune response and the outcome of response to checkpoint blockade, by direct comparison and using multivariable statistical models. Underlying these modules is a harmonization of primary sequencing data from 12 immuno-oncology trials with genomics data and matched clinical data available in the public domain. iAtlas also allows researchers to identify how tumor-intrinsic alterations, including mutations, copy-number alterations, and neoantigens relate to the immune microenvironment as evidenced in cancer genomic studies.  The initial version of CRI iAtlas was based on an analysis performed by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Research Network on the TCGA data set comprising over 10,000 tumor samples and 33 tumor types (Thorsson et al., Immunity 2018). In this analysis, each tumor sample was scored for a variety of readouts for immune response, including immune cell composition, adaptive cell receptor repertoire, cancer-immune subtypes, neoantigen load, and expression of genes coding for immunomodulatory proteins. iAtlas has now expanded to share immune characterization of data from another large  consortium:  Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG).  Work is underway to incorporate additional immuno-oncology data sets and immune-related aspects of The Human Tumor Atlas Network (HTAN). CRI iAtlas is made possible through a collaboration between the Cancer Research Institute, Sage Bionetworks, the Institute for Systems Biology, and the Vincent Lab at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Projects and Grants

Immune Atlas: Platform for immuno-oncology research and data sharing (phase 3)

Sage Bionetworks & Institute for Systems Biology | All Cancers | 2020