Online resources for data exploration, visualization, and discovery for the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project (PCAWG)

Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) encompasses the largest collection, to date, of uniformly-processed, cancer whole-genome sequencing data sets. While this dataset has the power to elucidate many cancer biology mechanisms, it also poses serious challenges for visualization tools because of its size and complexity. Here we describe five publicly available tools, each either designed or augmented to derive insights from this unique resource: The ICGC Data Portal, UCSC Xena, Expression Atlas, PCAWG-Scout, and Chromothripsis Explorer. Each of these web tools is designed to be user-friendly, putting sophisticated analyses in the hands of all researchers. Together, they enable researchers to dynamically query these complex genomics data, explore tumors9 molecular landscapes, and integrate external information to facilitate data interpretation. More information on these tools and their capabilities is available from The PCAWG Landing Page (http://docs.icgc.org/pcawg).