2016, Vol. 44, No. 8 | Antonio Colaprico, Tiago C. Silva, Catharina Olsen, Luciano Garofano, Claudia Cava, Davide Garolini, Thais S. Sabedot, Tathiane M. Malta, Stefano M. Pagnotta, Isabella Castiglioni, Michele Ceccarelli, Gianluca Bontempi, Houtan Noushmehr
The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) has released extensive clinical and molecular data on over 10,000 tumor patients across 33 different tumor types, providing a comprehensive resource for cancer research. However, mining this data presents several bioinformatics challenges, such as data retrieval, integration with clinical data, and other molecular data types. To address these challenges, the authors developed TCGAbiolinks, an R/Bioconductor package that facilitates the querying, downloading, and integrative analysis of TCGA data. The package combines methods from computer science and statistics, incorporating methodologies from previous TCGA marker studies. It offers a guided workflow for reproducibility, integrative analysis, and the utilization of different Bioconductor packages. The authors demonstrate the utility of TCGAbiolinks through case studies on four TCGA tumor types (Kidney, Brain, Breast, and Colon), illustrating reproducibility, integrative analysis, and the integration of different Bioconductor packages. The package is freely available within the Bioconductor project and aims to advance cancer research by providing a comprehensive suite of pipelines for data analysis.The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) has released extensive clinical and molecular data on over 10,000 tumor patients across 33 different tumor types, providing a comprehensive resource for cancer research. However, mining this data presents several bioinformatics challenges, such as data retrieval, integration with clinical data, and other molecular data types. To address these challenges, the authors developed TCGAbiolinks, an R/Bioconductor package that facilitates the querying, downloading, and integrative analysis of TCGA data. The package combines methods from computer science and statistics, incorporating methodologies from previous TCGA marker studies. It offers a guided workflow for reproducibility, integrative analysis, and the utilization of different Bioconductor packages. The authors demonstrate the utility of TCGAbiolinks through case studies on four TCGA tumor types (Kidney, Brain, Breast, and Colon), illustrating reproducibility, integrative analysis, and the integration of different Bioconductor packages. The package is freely available within the Bioconductor project and aims to advance cancer research by providing a comprehensive suite of pipelines for data analysis.