A Framework for Biological Data Normalization, Interoperability, and Mining for Cancer Microenvironment Analysis

Over the last decade, the advances in the high-throughput omic technologies have given the possibility to profile tumor cells at different levels, fostering the discovery of new biological data and the proliferation of a large number of bio-technological databases. In this paper we describe a framework for enabling the interoperability among different biological data sources and for ultimately supporting expert users in the complex process of extraction, navigation and visualization of the precious knowledge hidden in a such huge quantity of data. In this framework, a key role is played by the Connectivity Map, a databank which relates diseases, physiological processes, and the action of drugs. The system will be used in a pilot study on the Multiple Myeloma (MM).