Application of RNAi-induced gene expression profiles for prognostic prediction in breast cancer

Cloud bursting galaxy: federated identity and access management

MOTIVATION

Large biomedical datasets, such as those from genomics and imaging, are increasingly being stored on commercial and institutional cloud computing platforms. This is because cloud-scale computing resources, from robust backup to high-speed data transfer to scalable compute and storage, are needed to make these large datasets usable. However, one challenge for large-scale biomedical data on the cloud is providing secure access, especially when datasets are distributed across platforms. While there are open Web protocols for secure authentication and authorization, these protocols are not in wide use in bioinformatics and are difficult to use for even technologically sophisticated users.

RESULTS

We have developed a generic and extensible approach for securely accessing biomedical datasets distributed across cloud computing platforms. Our approach combines OpenID Connect and OAuth2, best-practice Web protocols for authentication and authorization, together with Galaxy (https://galaxyproject.org), a web-based computational workbench used by thousands of scientists across the world. With our enhanced version of Galaxy, users can access and analyze data distributed across multiple cloud computing providers without any special knowledge of access/authorization protocols. Our approach does not require users to share permanent credentials (e.g. username, password, API key), instead relying on automatically generated temporary tokens that refresh as needed. Our approach is generalizable to most identity providers and cloud computing platforms. To the best of our knowledge, Galaxy is the only computational workbench where users can access biomedical datasets across multiple cloud computing platforms using best-practice Web security approaches and thereby minimize risks of unauthorized data access and credential use.

AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION

Freely available for academic and commercial use under the open-source Academic Free License (https://opensource.org/licenses/AFL-3.0) from the following Github repositories: https://github.com/galaxyproject/galaxy and https://github.com/galaxyproject/cloudauthz.

Computational Investigation of Homologous Recombination DNA Repair Deficiency in Sporadic Breast Cancer

BRCAness has important implications in the management and treatment of patients with breast and ovarian cancer. In this study, we propose a computational framework to measure the BRCAness of breast and ovarian tumor samples based on their gene expression profiles. We define a characteristic profile for BRCAness by comparing gene expression differences between BRCA1/2 mutant familial tumors and sporadic breast cancer tumors while adjusting for relevant clinical factors. With this BRCAness profile, our framework calculates sample-specific BRCA scores, which indicates homologous recombination (HR)-mediated DNA repair pathway activity of samples. We found that in sporadic breast cancer high BRCAness score is associated with aberrant copy number of HR genes rather than somatic mutation and other genomic features. Moreover, we observed significant correlations of BRCA score with genome instability and neoadjuvant chemotherapy. More importantly, BRCA score provides significant prognostic value in both breast and ovarian cancers after considering established clinical variables. In summary, the inferred BRCAness from our framework can be used as a robust biomarker for the prediction of prognosis and treatment response in breast and ovarian cancers.