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

TLDR

Cancer immunotherapy successes highlight the need to study tumor–immune interactions, yet their complexity poses significant computational and experimental challenges. The study introduces TIMER, a resource for comprehensive molecular characterization of tumor–immune interactions. TIMER precomputes six immune cell subset levels for 10,897 tumors across 32 cancer types and offers six analytic modules to explore their associations with gene expression, clinical outcomes, mutations, and copy number alterations. The platform delivers a user‑friendly web interface enabling dynamic analysis and visualization of immune–tumor associations, benefiting cancer researchers. Published in Cancer Research 77(21):e108‑10; ©2017 AACR.

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. Cancer Res; 77(21); e108-10. ©2017 AACR.