A central research portal for mining pancreatic clinical and molecular datasets and accessing biobanked samples

Abstract

The Pancreatic Expression Database (PED) is a powerful resource dedicated to the mining and analysis of pancreatic -omics datasets. Here, we demonstrate the biological interpretations that are possible because of vital updates that have transformed PED into a dynamic analytics hub accommodating an extensive range of publicly available datasets. PED now hosts clinical and molecular datasets from four primary sources (Cancer Genome Atlas, International Cancer Genome Consortium, Cancer Cell Line Encyclopaedia and Genomics Evidence Neoplasia Information Exchange) that together form the foundation of omics profiling of pancreatic malignancies and related lesions (n=7,760 specimens). Several user-friendly analytical tools to explore and integrate the molecular data derived from these primary specimens and cell lines are now available. Crucially, PED is integrated as the data access point for Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund Tissue Bank - the only national pancreatic cancer biobank in the UK. This will pioneer a new era of biobanking to promote collaborative studies and effective sharing of multi-modal molecular, histopathology and imaging data from biobank samples (>60 000 tissue samples from >3400 cases and controls; 2,037 H&E images from 349 donors) and accelerate validation of in silico findings in patient-derived material. These updates place PED at the analytical forefront of pancreatic biomarker-based research, providing the user community with a distinct resource to facilitate hypothesis-testing on public data, validate novel research findings, and access curated, high-quality patient tissues for translational research. To demonstrate the practical utility of PED, we investigate somatic variants associated with established transcriptomic subtypes and disease prognosis: several patient-specific variants are clinically actionable and may be leveraged for precision medicine.