Pancreatic Cancer Action Network's SPARK: A Cloud-Based Patient Health Data and Analytics Platform for Pancreatic Cancer

Abstract

Purpose: Pancreatic cancer currently holds the position of third deadliest cancer in the United States and the 5-year survival rate is among the lowest for major cancers at just 12%. Thus, continued research efforts to better understand the clinical and molecular underpinnings of pancreatic cancer are critical to developing both early detection methodologies as well as improved therapeutic options. This study introduces Pancreatic Cancer Action Network's (PanCAN's) SPARK, a cloud-based data and analytics platform that integrates patient health data from the PanCAN's research initiatives and aims to accelerate pancreatic cancer research by making real-world patient health data and analysis tools easier to access and use.

Materials and methods: The SPARK platform integrates clinical, molecular, multiomic, imaging, and patient-reported data generated from PanCAN's research initiatives. The platform is built on a cloud-based infrastructure powered by Velsera. Cohort exploration and browser capabilities are built using Velsera ARIA, a specialized product for leveraging clinicogenomic data to build cohorts, query variant information, and drive downstream association analyses. Data science and analytic capabilities are also built into the platform allowing researchers to perform simple to complex analysis.

Results: Version 1 of the SPARK platform was released to pilot users, who represented diverse end users, including molecular biologists, clinicians, and bioinformaticians. Included in the pilot release of SPARK are deidentified clinical (including treatment and outcomes data), molecular, multiomic, and whole-slide pathology images for over 600 patients enrolled in PanCAN's Know Your Tumor molecular profiling service.

Conclusion: The pilot release of the SPARK platform introduces qualified researchers to PanCAN real-world patient health data and analytical resources in a centralized location.

FIG 1.

The PanCAN SPARK platform is built on the Velsera SB-CI. ARIA, a specialized product for leveraging clinicogenomic data to build cohorts on clinical, demographic, and molecular data (including genomic and transcriptomic data) and query variant information, layers on top of the SB-CI to create an end-to-end user experience. ID, user identification; PanCAN, Pancreatic Cancer Action Network; SB-CI, Seven Bridges Core Infrastructure.

FIG 2.

(A) KYT data can currently be explored in SPARK by filtering on multiple molecular and clinical features. (B) Distribution of G12/non-G12 KRAS mutations across all PDAC patients in the KYT data set. (C) Exploratory data analysis can be conducted using powerful and collaborative interactive data analytics capabilities in the built-in Data Studio. (D) Driver gene discovery analysis was conducted in RStudio using the dNdScv algorithm with default parameters. The mutational patterns of the significantly mutated genes for responders and nonresponders for KYT patients. KYT, Know Your Tumor; PanCAN, Pancreatic Cancer Action Network; PDAC, Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma.