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Review
. 2025 Apr;22(4):664-671.
doi: 10.1038/s41592-025-02643-0. Epub 2025 Mar 31.

Sharing data from the Human Tumor Atlas Network through standards, infrastructure and community engagement

Ino de Bruijn #  1 , Milen Nikolov #  2 , Clarisse Lau  3 , Ashley Clayton  2 , David L Gibbs  3 , Elvira Mitraka  2 , Dar'ya Pozhidayeva  3 , Alex Lash  4 , Selcuk Onur Sumer  5 , Jennifer Altreuter  4 , Kristen Anton  6 , Mialy DeFelice  2 , Xiang Li  5 , Aaron Lisman  5 , William J R Longabaugh  3 , Jeremy Muhlich  7 , Sandro Santagata  7 , Subhiksha Nandakumar  5 , Peter K Sorger  7 , Christine Suver  2 , Xengie Doan  2 , Justin Guinney  2 , Nikolaus Schultz  5 , Adam J Taylor  2 , Vésteinn Thorsson  3 , Ethan Cerami  8 , James A Eddy  2
Affiliations
Review

Sharing data from the Human Tumor Atlas Network through standards, infrastructure and community engagement

Ino de Bruijn et al. Nat Methods. 2025 Apr.

Abstract

Data from the first phase of the Human Tumor Atlas Network (HTAN) are now available, comprising 8,425 biospecimens from 2,042 research participants profiled with more than 20 molecular assays. The data were generated to study the evolution from precancerous to advanced disease. The HTAN Data Coordinating Center (DCC) has enabled their dissemination and effective reuse. We describe the diverse datasets, how to access them, data standards, underlying infrastructure and governance approaches, and our methods to sustain community engagement. HTAN data can be accessed through the HTAN Portal, explored in visualization tools-including CellxGene, Minerva and cBioPortal-and analyzed in the cloud through the NCI Cancer Research Data Commons. Infrastructure was developed to enable data ingestion and dissemination through the Synapse platform. The HTAN DCC's flexible and modular approach to sharing complex cancer research data offers valuable insights to other data-coordination efforts and researchers looking to leverage HTAN data.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: P.K.S. is a cofounder and member of the BOD of Glencoe Software, member of the BOD for Applied BioMath and a member of the SAB for RareCyte, NanoString, Reverb Therapeutics and Montai Health; he holds equity in Glencoe, Applied BioMath and RareCyte. S.S. is a consultant for RareCyte. The other authors declare no competing interests

Update of

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