
Cancer Genome Atlas – Interactive Exploration of Patient Gender, Race and Age - trevi
http://www.enpicom.com/visual-lab/tcga-exploration/embed/
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epistasis
I wonder why they chose these variables; they certainly aren't the first
things that come to mind from that dataset. In particular, they do not
necessarily mirror cancer incidence. Better to use actual incidence data if
that's what one wants to explore.

The whole point of the dataset was the molecular side. Gene expression, copy
number changes, and mutations.

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nbonzanni
The gene expression, copy number changes, and mutations in the TCGA data are
used to discover and develop new cancer treatments.

These (and others) molecular traits differ between gender, race, and age. An
over representation of a specific gender or race might affects the
effectiveness of the developed therapies towards other gender/race
combinations.

This visualization is meant to show at a glance how these clinical variables
are currently distributed in one of the most used and relevant cancer data-
sets.

The people at The Cancer Genome Atlas did a great job, but much more has to be
done to achieve the ambitious goal of Precision Medicine and have therapies
personalized to each one genetic makeup.

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epistasis
Right, which is what makes this visualization not interesting. If the
comparison had been between TCGA cohort characteristics and the cancer
population characteristics, that would be far more interesting.

Even weighting the tissue types by actual incidence rather than number of
samples would be far more interesting.

I was one of (many many many) co-authors on several TCGA consortium papers, so
I'm quite familiar with it, and with the challenges going forward, but this
visualization addresses none of those challenges.

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jghn
It's The Cancer Genome Atlas as the acronym they use is TCGA

