INTRODUCTION: The placenta is one of the least understood, yet arguably one of the most important organs for human health and development. While there have been numerous research efforts dedicated to understanding the placenta's critical role, these studies and the data they produced remain separated and largely disparate. In order to facilitate placental research, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child and Human Development (NICHD) released in October 2018 the Placental Atlas Tool (PAT) (https://pat.nichd.nih.gov/), an internet-based platform offering users a centralized placental database of molecular datasets, analytic tools, and images.
METHODS: PAT is a cloud-based system developed by the business requirements defined by NICHD leadership and extramural placental researchers. PAT employs a metadata-driven web interface to provide curated placental datasets and images, enriched with structured, descriptive metadata to enhance data discoverability. PAT also incorporates open source molecular data analytical tools to provide a flexible analytics workflow for placental researchers.
RESULTS: PAT launched with 426 analyzable molecular placental datasets consisting of over 12,500 samples from 10 distinct species, all systematically annotated and processed for enhanced research utility. 828 placental images, consisting of 7 imaging modalities across 47 species, and nearly 300 annotated linked publications supplement the datasets to facilitate knowledge integration and hypothesis generation across disparate molecular studies.
DISCUSSION: PAT will maximize the NICHD's investment in placental research by reinforcing open scientific inquiry, facilitating reuse of datasets, promoting novel research and testing of new hypotheses and analytic methods, and facilitating education of new researchers.
