Background With the increased volume of genomics data from studies involving treatment with immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI) and other immunotherapies, researchers remain unable to to make full use of results due to lack of comprehensive access to data or th ability to compare outcomes across datasets.The Cancer Research Institute (CRI) iAtlas 1 (www.cri-iatlas.org) is a comprehensive web platform for interactive data exploration and discovery in immuno-oncology, originating in a study by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). 1-3 iAtlas provides topic-oriented analysis modules, each generating visualizations and statistics for studying interactions between tumors and the immune microenvironment (figure 1). Methods Immunogenomic features from 15 ICI trials encompassing 1,142 samples were processed with a standardized bioinformatics workflow 4 and incorporated into iAtlas, augmenting the 11,535 patient samples from TCGA 1-3 and the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes 5 consortia. A compendium of in-development immunotherapy drug targets 6 and results of a study of germline genetic contribution to immune response in cancer 7 were included. For efficient access, all data were incorporated into a relational database, and programmatic access was made available through an application programming interface (API) (figure 2). The set of available iAtlas modules was vastly extended, and numerous improvements were made to the codebase. Users can now define sample cohorts and sample groups based on any available categorical or numerical variable.Results iAtlas provides 17 interactive analysis modules (table 1) to explore immune-cancer interactions, immunotherapy treatment, and outcomes in 12,677 patient samples. Six modules are dedicated to ICI studies: dataset overview, immune readouts, immunomodulators, clinical outcome, regression analysis, and a machine learning module to enable identification of factors associated with response to therapy (figure 3). We added modules to explore how germline variation and copy number alterations relate to immune response, and how receptor-ligand interactions mediate interactions among tumor and immune cells (figure 4). Docker images using Common Workflow Language descriptors are provided so that researchers can run iAtlas workflows on their own data. Computational notebooks are provided to illustrate and explain iAtlas code, plots, and functionality and to facilitate integration of iAtlas data with data sourced from a researcher's own study.Conclusions iAtlas serves as a repository and resource for harmonized data on immune response in cancer and response to immunotherapy. iAtlas enables researchers to readily test hypotheses and access data through multiple modalities: an interactive web portal, data download, tools, 8 and computational workflows and notebooks. Abstract 927 Figure 1 CRI iAtlas Explorer Entry into exploration of immune response in cancer with iAtlas. Researchers start by defining cohorts and sample groups, and can then explore and visualize results using any of 17 analysis m...

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This article describes the research questions and presents the initial AMS dates of the Middle Draa Project (southern Morocco), a collaborative field survey project between the University of Leicester and the Institut National des Sciences de l' Archéologie et du Patrimoine (INSAP) of Morocco. Starting from a very low baseline of past archaeological research in this pre-desert valley, the overall objective of the project is to establish the extent, character and chronology of the rich archaeology of the Wadi Draa. The results presented here detail a hitherto unknown phase of major occupation in the Draa in the 4th-6th centuries AD evidenced by complex hilltop settlements and extensive cairn cemeteries (an initial typology is presented). A second medieval phase comprised major urban centres that are contemporary with the Almoravid and Almohad periods of Moroccan history. Alongside these urban centres, there are the remains of substantial mudbrick oasis settlements and irrigation and field-systems of a contemporary date. A key contribution of this paper concerns the construction of an outline chronology based upon initial analysis of the ceramics collected, but crucially supplemented and supported by a major program of AMS dating. The remote sensing and field survey data collected by the project enable us to develop some hypotheses concerning the long-term history of this important oasis valley.

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