Data from Landmark Chernobyl studies, New Methylation Pipeline, and More

  • Date Posted:
    • September 23, 2021
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Highlights from the GDC's recent Data Release 30 include data from major studies exploring the effects of Chernobyl radiation and methylation arrays processed via a new pipeline at the GDC. The data release also includes a variety of data characterizing cervical cancer cases from NCI's CGCI HTMCP project, methylation data from NCI's Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) program, and next-generation cancer models from NCI's Human Cancer Models Initiative (HCMI). Newly processed RNA-seq data from TCGA testicular germ cell tumors, new aliquots from TARGET acute myeloid leukemia samples, and other data is available.

Papillary Thyroid Cancer and Transgenerational Studies of the Cherynobl Accident

Two recent studies investigated the potential health effects of exposure to ionizing radiation from the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine. In one study, researchers characterized thyroid cancers that developed in people exposed as children or in utero to ionizing radiation from the accident as well as unexposed individuals.

In the so-called Trios study, researchers looked at whole genomes of 130 people born between 1987 and 2002 and their 105 mother-father pairs. One or both of these parents had experienced a range of radiation doses.

The studies were conducted by international teams of investigators led by researchers at NCI. The data can be found under project names REBC-THYR and TRIO-CRU in the GDC.

SeSAME Methylation Pipeline

The GDC released a new bioinformatics pipeline for processing raw methylation arrays utilizing the Sensible Step-wise Analysis of Methylation data (SeSAMe) method. Methylation "beta values" are generated using the ratio of intensities between unmethylated and methylated alleles. Details of the pipeline are available on the GDC's documentation site.

Data Release 30 includes methylation data for over 1200 Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) cases, and 165 Human Cancer Models Initiative (HCMI) cases. Both methylation beta values and raw and masked array files (IDAT format) are available for download.

Data Release v30.0 Notes