TIMER: A Web Server for Comprehensive Analysis of Tumor-Infiltrating Immune Cells

Abstract

Recent clinical successes of cancer immunotherapy necessitate the investigation of the interaction between malignant cells and the host immune system. However, elucidation of complex tumor-immune interactions presents major computational and experimental challenges. Here, we present Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER; cistrome.shinyapps.io/timer) to comprehensively investigate molecular characterization of tumor-immune interactions. Levels of six tumor-infiltrating immune subsets are precalculated for 10,897 tumors from 32 cancer types. TIMER provides 6 major analytic modules that allow users to interactively explore the associations between immune infiltrates and a wide spectrum of factors, including gene expression, clinical outcomes, somatic mutations, and somatic copy number alterations. TIMER provides a user-friendly web interface for dynamic analysis and visualization of these associations, which will be of broad utilities to cancer researchers. <i>Cancer Res; 77(21); e108-10. ©2017 AACR</i>.