Database Commons

a catalog of worldwide biological databases

Due to the explosion of cancer genome data and the urgent needs for cancer treatment, it is becoming increasingly important and necessary to easily and timely analyze and annotate cancer genomes. However, tumor heterogeneity is recognized as a serious barrier to annotate cancer genomes at the individual patient level. In addition, the interpretation and analysis of cancer multi-omics data rely heavily on existing database resources that are often located in different data centers or research institutions, which poses a huge challenge for data parsing. Here we present CCAS (Cancer genome Consensus Annotation System, https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/ccas/#/home), a one-stop and comprehensive annotation system for the individual patient at multi-omics level. CCAS integrates 20 widely recognized resources in the field to support data annotation of 10 categories of cancers covering 395 subtypes. Data from each resource are manually curated and standardized by using ontology frameworks. CCAS accepts data on single nucleotide variant/insertion or deletion, expression, copy number variation, and methylation level as input files to build a consensus annotation. Outputs are arranged in the forms of tables or figures and can be searched, sorted, and downloaded. Expanded panels with additional information are used for conciseness, and most figures are interactive to show additional information. Moreover, CCAS offers multidimensional annotation information, including mutation signature pattern, gene set enrichment analysis, pathways and clinical trial related information. These are helpful for intuitively understanding the molecular mechanisms of tumors and discovering key functional genes.