Seattle Translational Tumor Research
Seattle Translational Tumor Research (STTR) connects scientists across disciplines and institutions to speed research and enable discoveries that lead to new methods for cancer prevention, early diagnosis and treatment that improve the lives of patients with cancer.
STTR was launched and is directed by Dr. Eric Holland, an internationally renowned neurosurgeon and cancer biologist who also leads Fred Hutch’s Human Biology Division. This collaboration exemplifies Fred Hutch’s commitment to developing novel approaches to prevent and treat cancer, and contributes to our reputation as a pioneer for developing lifesaving cancer therapies.
STTR brings together scientists and clinicians from several Seattle-area institutions, including Fred Hutch, UW Medicine, and Seattle Children’s Hospital, and others. STTR harnesses our collective expertise by offering advanced tools, resource development and unique administrative support to accelerate the pace of discovery.
One of our key innovations is Oncoscape, a data visualization platform that combines and provides visualization for large-scale datasets from cancer biology and clinical trials. Providing powerful, reproducible analysis, Oncoscape has the potential to revolutionize our approach to cancer research and care for decades to come.
“Many people are visual thinkers. Building systems that allow researchers to see and understand data visually has a huge impact. This kind of analysis has the potential to completely change the way we understand and treat cancer.”
— Dr. Eric Holland
Oncoscape: A Web-Based Data Exploration and Visualization Portal
Toward Precision Medicine
Driven by our goal to offer precision diagnostics and individualized treatment to cancer patients, we have developed shared systems for specimen collection and molecular analysis as well as for collecting and cataloguing patient data. We also fund seed grants for novel ideas that hold promise for patient care, as well as facilitating collaborative grants among our more than 500 STTR members. Our work derives insights from population research, molecular biology, clinical studies, tumor imaging and analysis, and computational biology. We have identified 15 priority research areas, each led by a senior scientist at one of our member institutions:
Mining Big Data to Revolutionize Tumor Treatment
Oncoscape, created at Fred Hutch following the vision of Dr. Eric Holland, is a data visualization and analysis platform for clinical and genetic data. Oncoscape aims to reduce barriers common in analysis of big data such as collaborative data sharing and reproducibility. Through the simplified user interface, researchers, even those who are not experts in computational biology, can investigate their data in new ways, allowing them to uncover new paths for cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Inside the tool, research can seamlessly move from one analysis tool to the next, reducing wasted time that otherwise comes from having to download and upload datasets when moving between tools. Users can build cancer-type-specific cohorts and compare them using state-of-the-art computational and analysis methods or one of the many other novel comparative visualizations. Uploaded data can remain private or shared between colleagues. Oncoscape accelerates research and supports researchers to dig deeper into their data, learning more than was ever before possible through a single tool.
Combining analytics, visualization and reproducibility, Oncoscape confidently stands as one of the leading software applications in the field of cancer omics research.
Oncoscape is open source and readily available to anyone interested in large-scale data analysis. To request a demo, please contact the STTR team.
Contact Rachel Galbraith
Program Operations Director
Visit the Seattle Tumor Translational Research (STTR) website to learn more.
Email:
STTRCancer@fredhutch.org