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Abstract Background As part of a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded collaborative project, we have performed over 150 microarray experiments measuring the response of C57/BL6 mouse bone marrow macrophages to toll-like receptor stimuli. These microarray expression profiles are available freely from our project web site http://www.innateImmunity-systemsbiology.org. Here, we report the development of a database of computationally predicted transcription factor binding sites and related genomic features for a set of over 2000 murine immune genes of interest. Our database, which includes microarray co-expression clusters and a host of web-based query, analysis and visualization facilities, is available freely via the internet. It provides a broad resource to the research community, and a stepping stone towards the delineation of the network of transcriptional regulatory interactions underlying the integrated response of macrophages to pathogens. Description We constructed a database indexed on genes and annotations of the immediate surrounding genomic regions. To facilitate both gene-specific and systems biology oriented research, our database provides the means to analyze individual genes or an entire genomic locus. Although our focus to-date has been on mammalian toll-like receptor signaling pathways, our database structure is not limited to this subject, and is intended to be broadly applicable to immunology. By focusing on selected immune-active genes, we were able to perform computationally intensive expression and sequence analyses that would currently be prohibitive if applied to the entire genome. Using six complementary computational algorithms and methodologies, we identified transcription factor binding sites based on the Position Weight Matrices available in TRANSFAC. For one example transcription factor (ATF3) for which experimental data is available, over 50% of our predicted binding sites coincide with genome-wide chromatin immnuopreciptation (ChIP-chip) results. Our database can be interrogated via a web interface. Genomic annotations and binding site predictions can be automatically viewed with a customized version of the Argo genome browser. Conclusion We present the Innate Immune Database (IIDB) as a community resource for immunologists interested in gene regulatory systems underlying innate responses to pathogens. The database website can be freely accessed at http://db.systemsbiology.net/IIDB.

Abstract Background The extraction of biological knowledge from genome-scale data sets requires its analysis in the context of additional biological information. The importance of integrating experimental data sets with molecular interaction networks has been recognized and applied to the study of model organisms, but its systematic application to the study of human disease has lagged behind due to the lack of tools for performing such integration. Results We have developed techniques and software tools for simplifying and streamlining the process of integration of diverse experimental data types in molecular networks, as well as for the analysis of these networks. We applied these techniques to extract, from genomic expression data from Hepatitis C virus-infected liver tissue, potentially useful hypotheses related to the onset of this disease. Our integration of the expression data with large-scale molecular interaction networks and subsequent analyses identified molecular pathways that appear to be induced or repressed in the response to Hepatitis C viral infection. Conclusion The methods and tools we have implemented allow for the efficient dynamic integration and analysis of diverse data in a major human disease system. This integrated data set in turn enabled simple analyses to yield hypotheses related to the response to Hepatitis C viral infection.

Tumor immunology has changed the landscape of cancer treatment. Yet, not all patients benefit as cancer immune responsiveness (CIR) remains a limitation in a considerable proportion of cases. The multifactorial determinants of CIR include the genetic makeup of the patient, the genomic instability central to cancer development, the evolutionary emergence of cancer phenotypes under the influence of immune editing, and external modifiers such as demographics, environment, treatment potency, co-morbidities and cancer-independent alterations including immune homeostasis and polymorphisms in the major and minor histocompatibility molecules, cytokines, and chemokines. Based on the premise that cancer is fundamentally a disorder of the genes arising within a cell biologic process, whose deviations from normality determine the rules of engagement with the host's response, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) convened a task force of experts from various disciplines including, immunology, oncology, biophysics, structural biology, molecular and cellular biology, genetics, and bioinformatics to address the complexity of CIR from a holistic view. The task force was launched by a workshop held in San Francisco on May 14-15, 2018 aimed at two preeminent goals: 1) to identify the fundamental questions related to CIR and 2) to create an interactive community of experts that could guide scientific and research priorities by forming a logical progression supported by multiple perspectives to uncover mechanisms of CIR. This workshop was a first step toward a second meeting where the focus would be to address the actionability of some of the questions identified by working groups. In this event, five working groups aimed at defining a path to test hypotheses according to their relevance to human cancer and identifying experimental models closest to human biology, which include: 1) Germline-Genetic, 2) Somatic-Genetic and 3) Genomic-Transcriptional contributions to CIR, 4) Determinant(s) of Immunogenic Cell Death that modulate CIR, and 5) Experimental Models that best represent CIR and its conversion to an immune responsive state. This manuscript summarizes the contributions from each group and should be considered as a first milestone in the path toward a more contemporary understanding of CIR. We appreciate that this effort is far from comprehensive and that other relevant aspects related to CIR such as the microbiome, the individual's recombined T cell and B cell receptors, and the metabolic status of cancer and immune cells were not fully included. These and other important factors will be included in future activities of the taskforce. The taskforce will focus on prioritization and specific actionable approach to answer the identified questions and implementing the collaborations in the follow-up workshop, which will be held in Houston on September 4-5, 2019.