CancerProteome: a resource to functionally decipher the proteome landscape in cancer.

Advancements in mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics have greatly facilitated the large-scale quantification of proteins and microproteins, thereby revealing altered signalling pathways across many different cancer types. However, specialized and comprehensive resources are lacking for cancer proteomics. Here, we describe CancerProteome (http://bio-bigdata.hrbmu.edu.cn/CancerProteome), which functionally deciphers and visualizes the proteome landscape in cancer. We manually curated and re-analyzed publicly available MS-based quantification and post-translational modification (PTM) proteomes, including 7406 samples from 21 different cancer types, and also examined protein abundances and PTM levels in 31 120 proteins and 4111 microproteins. Six major analytical modules were developed with a view to describe protein contributions to carcinogenesis using proteome analysis, including conventional analyses of quantitative and the PTM proteome, functional enrichment, protein-protein associations by integrating known interactions with co-expression signatures, drug sensitivity and clinical relevance analyses. Moreover, protein abundances, which correlated with corresponding transcript or PTM levels, were evaluated. CancerProteome is convenient as it allows users to access specific proteins/microproteins of interest using quick searches or query options to generate multiple visualization results. In summary, CancerProteome is an important resource, which functionally deciphers the cancer proteome landscape and provides a novel insight for the identification of tumor protein markers in cancer.

Prioritizing exhausted T cell marker genes highlights immune subtypes in pan-cancer.

Exhausted T (TEX) cells are main immunotherapy targets in cancer, but it lacks a general identification method to characterize TEX cell in disease. To assess the characterization of TEX cell, we extract signature of TEX cell from large cancer and chronic infection cohorts. Based on single-cell transcriptomes, a systematic T cell exhaustion prediction (TEXP) model is designed to define TEX cell in cancer and chronic infection. We then prioritize 42 marker genes, including HAVCR2, PDCD1, TOX, TIGIT and LAG3, which are associated with T cell exhaustion. TEXP could identify high TEX and low TEX subtypes in pan-cancer of TCGA. The high TEX subtypes are characterized by high immune score, immune cell infiltration, high expression of TEX marker genes and poor prognosis. In summary, TEXP and marker genes provide a resource for understanding the function of TEX cell, with implications for immune prediction and immunotherapy in chronic infection and cancer.

Spatial transcriptome analysis of long non-coding RNAs reveals tissue specificity and functional roles in cancer.

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a significant role in maintaining tissue morphology and functions, and their precise regulatory effectiveness is closely related to expression patterns. However, the spatial expression patterns of lncRNAs in humans are poorly characterized. Here, we constructed five comprehensive transcriptomic atlases of human lncRNAs covering thousands of major tissue samples in normal and disease states. The lncRNA transcriptomes exhibited high consistency within the same tissues across resources, and even higher complexity in specialized tissues. Tissue-elevated (TE) lncRNAs were identified in each resource and robust TE lncRNAs were refined by integrative analysis. We detected 1 to 4684 robust TE lncRNAs across tissues; the highest number was in testis tissue, followed by brain tissue. Functional analyses of TE lncRNAs indicated important roles in corresponding tissue-related pathways. Moreover, we found that the expression features of robust TE lncRNAs made them be effective biomarkers to distinguish tissues; TE lncRNAs also tended to be associated with cancer, and exhibited differential expression or were correlated with patient survival. In summary, spatial classification of lncRNAs is the starting point for elucidating the function of lncRNAs in both maintenance of tissue morphology and progress of tissue-constricted diseases.

IEAtlas: an atlas of HLA-presented immune epitopes derived from non-coding regions.

Cancer-related epitopes can engage the immune system against tumor cells, thus exploring epitopes derived from non-coding regions is emerging as a fascinating field in cancer immunotherapies. Here, we described a database, IEAtlas (http://bio-bigdata.hrbmu.edu.cn/IEAtlas), which aims to provide and visualize the comprehensive atlas of human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-presented immunogenic epitopes derived from non-coding regions. IEAtlas reanalyzed publicly available mass spectrometry-based HLA immunopeptidome datasets against our integrated benchmarked non-canonical open reading frame information. The current IEAtlas identified 245 870 non-canonical epitopes binding to HLA-I/II allotypes across 15 cancer types and 30 non-cancerous tissues, greatly expanding the cancer immunopeptidome. IEAtlas further evaluates the immunogenicity via several commonly used immunogenic features, including HLA binding affinity, stability and T-cell receptor recognition. In addition, IEAtlas provides the biochemical properties of epitopes as well as the clinical relevance of corresponding genes across major cancer types and normal tissues. Several flexible tools were also developed to aid retrieval and to analyze the epitopes derived from non-coding regions. Overall, IEAtlas will serve as a valuable resource for investigating the immunogenic capacity of non-canonical epitopes and the potential as therapeutic cancer vaccines.

PRES: a webserver for decoding the functional perturbations of RNA editing sites.

Rapid progresses in RNA-Seq and computational methods have assisted in quantifying A-to-I RNA editing and altered RNA editing sites have been widely observed in various diseases. Nevertheless, functional characterization of the altered RNA editing sites still remains a challenge. Here, we developed perturbations of RNA editing sites (PRES; http://bio-bigdata.hrbmu.edu.cn/PRES/) as the webserver for decoding functional perturbations of RNA editing sites based on editome profiling. After uploading an editome profile among samples of different groups, PRES will first annotate the editing sites to various genomic elements and detect differential editing sites under the user-selected method and thresholds. Next, the downstream functional perturbations of differential editing sites will be characterized from gain or loss miRNA/RNA binding protein regulation, RNA and protein structure changes, and the perturbed biological pathways. A prioritization module was developed to rank genes based on their functional consequences of RNA editing events. PRES provides user-friendly functionalities, ultra-efficient calculation, intuitive table and figure visualization interface to display the annotated RNA editing events, filtering options and elaborate application notebooks. We anticipate PRES will provide an opportunity for better understanding the regulatory mechanisms of RNA editing in human complex diseases.

TransLnc: a comprehensive resource for translatable lncRNAs extends immunopeptidome.

LncRNAs are not only well-known as non-coding elements, but also serve as templates for peptide translation, playing important roles in fundamental cellular processes and diseases. Here, we describe a database, TransLnc (http://bio-bigdata.hrbmu.edu.cn/TransLnc/), which aims to provide comprehensive experimentally supported and predicted lncRNA peptides in multiple species. TransLnc currently documents approximate 583 840 peptides encoded by 33 094 lncRNAs. Six types of direct and indirect evidences supporting the coding potential of lncRNAs were integrated, and 65.28% peptides entries were with at least one type of evidence. Considering the strong tissue-specific expression of lncRNAs, TransLnc allows users to access lncRNA peptides in any of the 34 tissues involved in. In addition, both the unique characteristic and homology relationship were also predicted and provided. Importantly, TransLnc provides computationally predicted tumour neoantigens from peptides encoded by lncRNAs, which would provide novel insights into cancer immunotherapy. There were 220 791 and 237 915 candidate neoantigens binding by major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I or II molecules, respectively. Several flexible tools were developed to aid retrieve and analyse, particularly lncRNAs tissue expression patterns, clinical relevance across cancer types. TransLnc will serve as a valuable resource for investigating the translation capacity of lncRNAs and greatly extends the cancer immunopeptidome.

SurvivalMeth: a web server to investigate the effect of DNA methylation-related functional elements on prognosis.

Aberrant DNA methylation is a fundamental characterization of epigenetics for carcinogenesis. Abnormality of DNA methylation-related functional elements (DMFEs) may lead to dysfunction of regulatory genes in the progression of cancers, contributing to prognosis of many cancers. There is an urgent need to construct a tool to comprehensively assess the impact of DMFEs on prognosis. Therefore, we developed SurvivalMeth (http://bio-bigdata.hrbmu.edu.cn/survivalmeth) to explore the prognosis-related DMFEs, which documented many kinds of DMFEs, including 309,465 CpG island-related elements, 104,748 transcript-related elements, 77,634 repeat elements, as well as cell-type specific 1,689,653 super enhancers (SE) and 1,304,902 CTCF binding regions for analysis. SurvivalMeth is a convenient tool which collected DNA methylation profiles of 36 cancers and allowed users to query their genes of interest in different datasets for prognosis. Furthermore, SurvivalMeth not only integrated different combinations, including single DMFE, multiple DMFEs, SEs and clinical data, to perform survival analysis on preupload data but also allowed for uploading customized DNA methylation profile of DMFEs from various diseases to analyze. SurvivalMeth provided a comprehensive resource and automated analysis for prognostic DMFEs, including DMFE methylation level, correlation analysis, clinical analysis, differential analysis, DMFE annotation, survival-related detailed result and visualization of survival analysis. In summary, we believe that SurvivalMeth will facilitate prognostic research of DMFEs in diverse cancers.

LncSpA: LncRNA Spatial Atlas of Expression across Normal and Cancer Tissues.

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNA) play important roles in maintaining morphology and function of tissues, and their regulatory effectiveness is closely associated with spatial expression. To provide a comprehensive spatial atlas of expression for lncRNA, we propose LncSpA (http://bio-bigdata.hrbmu.edu.cn/LncSpA) to explore tissue-elevated (TE) lncRNA across human normal and adult and pediatric cancer tissues. In total, 71,131 and 12,007 TE lncRNAs and 634 clinical-related TE lncRNAs were identified across 38 normal and 33 adult cancer tissues. Moreover, 4,688 TE and 413 clinical-related lncRNAs were identified in pediatric cancer. By quick searching or query options, users can obtain eight major types of detailed information for lncRNA via various visualization techniques, including qualitative and quantitative spatial expression in different resources, coexpressed mRNAs, predicted function, known disease association, and the potential to serve as diagnostic or prognostic markers. LncSpA will be a valuable resource to understand lncRNA functions across tissues and cancers, leading to enhanced therapeutic strategies in precision oncology. SIGNIFICANCE: LncSpA is a new interactive resource that provides the spatial expression pattern of lncRNA across thousands of normal and cancer samples representing major tissue types.