The November 1, 2017 issue of Cancer Research is dedicated to a collection of computational resource papers in genomics, proteomics, animal models, imaging, and clinical subjects for non-bioinformaticists looking to incorporate computing tools into their work. Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed P-MartCancer, an open, web-based interactive software tool that enables statistical analyses of peptide or protein data generated from mass-spectrometry (MS)-based global proteomics experiments. The use of MS-based technology is of great interest in the cancer research field because it provides insight into biological functions at the protein level and processes involved in cancer development and progression.
P-MartCancer accesses proteomic datasets generated through the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) Data Portal. P-MartCancer consists of a modular workflow that is user-friendly for biomedical researchers, making it unique within the existing tools that support CPTAC. P-MartCancer allows users to perform quality control processing, statistics, protein quantification, and exploratory data analysis tasks in a reproducible, workflow-based manner, without the need of having a statistical programming background. The P-MartCancer software aims to enable continued exploration and evaluation of existing data, increasing the potential for new discovery from the CPTAC Data Portal and other comprehensive public datasets.
This article is published in an online-only issue of Cancer Research.
Visit the CPTAC Data Portal to access CPTAC datasets – click here.